Man charged with shooting Everett motel guest 12 times
Published 1:30 am Sunday, June 17, 2018
EVERETT — A dozen bullets pierced a man’s body at an Everett motel last month. It was nothing short of a miracle that he survived, according to charges against the alleged gunman.
A guest at the Farwest Motel was walking back to his room on the morning of May 16, in the 6000 block of Evergreen Way, when three people cut him off. One man, Harry Lee Jones Jr., 24, had a handgun. Once they were inside the room, the gunman beat the guest with the butt of the pistol, leaving him bloodied, court papers say. He demanded cash.
The guest, 39, handed over a few hundred dollars, he later told police. Jones reportedly told him to crawl into a bathtub — but the guest refused, fearing he’d be shot to death there. Instead he lunged for the gun, according to the charges.
The shooter opened fire. The first bullet shattered the man’s femur, court papers say. Eleven more rounds struck the man in the arms, torso, legs, groin and the back of the head.
“Miraculously, though gravely wounded, (the man) did not die and was eventually transported to the hospital for the treatment of his many wounds,” deputy prosecutor Chris Dickinson wrote.
Officers spent hours searching for Jones, a sex offender from Marysville who wore a cast on one leg. He hunkered down in a yard until a resident found him in the afternoon, according to the story he later relayed to police. Jones was caught when an officer saw him limping across a field at a nearby elementary school.
Jones told detectives he acted in self-defense, when the man rushed at him. He led police to where he’d hidden the disassembled 9 mm pistol, in a bush by Value Village. Jones recently finished serving a prison sentence of more than three years for illegal firearm possession. He has a history of misdemeanor assault, robbery, child molestation and failing to register as a sex offender.
He is charged with first-degree assault and first-degree robbery.
Police caught up to the other two suspects — a man, 23, and a woman, 28 — two weeks after the shooting. They remained behind bars Friday at the Snohomish County Jail.
Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.
