WENATCHEE — A Snohomish man was so worried about his alleged victim showing up in court on Thursday that he had a friend impersonate a court official and give her the wrong time for a hearing, police said.

The plan backfired, police say, when a prosecutor called the woman and found out she had been given the wrong time.

Ryan T. Payton, 32, of Snohomish, who was in court on an assault charge, ended up being booked into jail on suspicion of witness tampering, first-degree criminal impersonation of a public officer and 10 counts of violating a no-contact order.

"He'd been calling the victim to try to convince her not to show up to court," said Sgt. John Kruse with the Wenatchee Police Department.

"He was not convinced that was working, so he had a female friend call the victim right before court started to say she was with the prosecutor's office and that court had been rescheduled and she was not needed until 1 p.m."

When the woman was not in Chelan County District Court at 9 a.m., the prosecutor called her.