Jake Harris
Blair Bunting/Discovery Channel
Harris, 24, is currently in jail in Seattle after police say he got into an accident while intoxicated. He has been charged with hit and run, DUI and driving with a suspended license. Bail was set at $2,000.
"Mr. Harris was spotted driving a BMW 3 Series erratically Thursday evening by a citizen in Shoreline, Wa. We were able to locate his vehicle by aircraft, and he was pulled over in the Seattle area. The car was registered to his father," says Washington State Patrol spokesman Dan McDonald.
"He failed a field sobriety test and refused to take a toxicological test," McDonald added. "After further investigation, it was found that he was involved in a hit and run with another occupied vehicle earlier in the evening. He had rear-ended another car."
A deckhand on the fishing vessel Cornelia Marie, Jake has been struggling with grief following the death of his father, Captain Phil Harris, earlier this month.
Honoring His Dad
On Feb 13, Harris and his brother Josh attended a small gathering of friends and family at his father’s favorite Seattle-area casino to honor his life. "The old man, he had a lot of buddies," Harris told PEOPLE. "We didn't want to make it really sad. So we picked somewhere the old man, you know, loved to go, and hopefully we will tell stories about what a good life he led."But the fisherman's grief was palpable.
"I'm going to be looking at that chair in a different way," he said of his father’s captain's seat. "We definitely talked about it, but I just didn't expect this to happen so soon."
TMZ.com was first to report the news of Jake's arrest.
• Reporting by CYNTHIA WANG and KEN LEE
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