Cold case: Father was shot to death at his Lynnwood-area home

LYNNWOOD — Katrina Porter doesn’t understand why her daddy isn’t home.

The 6-year-old girl doesn’t know why she can’t talk to him or hold his hand. She doesn’t understand why she doesn’t have a daddy to push her on the swings at the park or steady her bicycle when she gets on for the first time.

Katrina only knows some “bad guys” came. She was 4. Katrina still cries.

Christopher Porter, 43, was shot to death at his Lynnwood-area home. His homicide remains unsolved. Porter is on the king of spades in the state’s first cold-case deck of playing cards. The cards are being provided to jail and prison inmates around the state.

Detectives hope the cards will generate leads to help them find justice for Porter’s children and other families who wait for answers.

Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives believe Porter was shot Dec. 14, 2005, during a botched home-invasion robbery. Someone forced their way in through the front door and confronted Porter in the foyer. His family was gone. Porter’s father found him, crumpled just inside the entrance to the home.

Nothing was missing from the house.

So much was stolen from a little girl and the rest of the man’s family.

“I would give anything to have him back,” Catherine Porter said of her husband.

His four children miss him. His two granddaughters will never know him. His mother sometimes looks for him in the faces of strangers.

Detectives canvassed Porter’s neighborhood but didn’t find anyone who witnessed the shooting. One neighbor reported that he was walking his dog about 11:45 p.m. and saw two men in their late teens to early 20s walking in the area. He didn’t recognize the pair from the neighborhood. The two men haven’t been identified.

Porter’s family prays the cold-case cards will motivate someone to step forward with information that will help solve the case. They hope someone will do the right thing.

“I’d like to read about somebody’s case being solved. It would be nice if it was my son’s,” Barbara Porter said.

Porter’s family can’t give Katrina her daddy back. Maybe someday they can tell her the “bad guys” won’t be able to hurt anyone else’s daddy.