A fiercely protective mom dies in another Everett shooting

EVERETT — A woman killed in a shooting at a mobile home south of Everett appears to be a mother with a history of defending her two teenage sons from other boys at school.

One boy, 17, suffered gunshot wounds that weren’t considered life-threatening when shots rang out about 4:45 a.m. at Village Green Mobile Home Park on E. Gibson Road, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s deputies were summoned by a 911 call about a burglary — then a report of shots fired — at a white double-wide mobile home with teal trim. As many as four intruders were seen. They fled before deputies arrived to find the woman, 54, dead at the scene. The sheriff’s office wouldn’t confirm her identity until an autopsy is performed.

One person, a “juvenile male,” was detained by deputies, the sheriff’s office announced in the afternoon. No details have been released about that boy, or his alleged role in the shooting. He was being questioned.

Records show a woman, 54, lived there with two sons and their grandmother. In recent years, the mom filed protection orders in court on behalf of both of boys, to keep kids from harassing them at school or on social media.

At high school one day in 2014, another student barrelled through a school security guard to throw a punch at the face of one of her sons, the mother alleged in court records. Her other boy faced death threats over a $10 debt, according to transcripts of a Facebook conversation from 2015.

“u can stop this just pay us the ten dollars u owe us and its over,” the lender wrote. He went on to threaten that the boy would be beaten up and “shanked.”

“I can have u killed like that,” he warned.

The mother took her son’s phone and messaged back.

“This is being recorded and this is (the boy’s) mom,” she wrote. The other teen responded with expletives, and repeated a message more than 50 times, of a thumbs up emoji.

Both of the woman’s sons dropped out of Mariner High School this year, according to the Mukilteo School District.

Kelly Foote, 58, a longtime resident of Village Green, didn’t hear the gunshots from his home a few doors down. A neighbor’s phone call woke him. He knows the family. The boys’ grandmother has lived there for decades, he said. He talks with her often, a few times a week. Foote spent Halloween night with them, and they gave him flowers and hugs when his wife died recently.

Many fences in the mobile home park have been tagged by gangs, Foote said.

South Everett has been mired in gun violence in recent months. Many of those cases center on teens and gangs.

Around 2 a.m. Thursday, a drive-by shooter left bullet holes in the Hangar 128 apartments, about a half-mile southeast of the mobile home park. Shell casings were recovered from the scene off 8th Avenue W. Detectives saw no apparent link in the two shootings, said Shari Ireton, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office.

There have been dozens of other shootings and some have ended in serious injury or death, as in the case of Mariner High School student David Sandoval, 14. He was shot over the color of his blue shoes, police said. The boy charged with killing him was 13.

So far the sheriff’s office hasn’t said whether it believes gangs or drugs played a role in the fatal break-in Thursday morning. Major crimes detectives were gathering evidence at the scene on a frosty morning. They spent hours in frigid air waiting on a search warrant, so they could go inside the home.

Suspect descriptions of the intruders weren’t released.

The Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office is expected to confirm the woman’s identity and how she died. The teen who was shot was taken to an Everett hospital for emergency care.

Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.