EVERETT — Despite past objections from his own family and an appeal from prosecutors, an Everett teenager who killed his adoptive mother could soon get a new sentence, a state appellate court ruled last week.
The ruling could allow Brad George to join a growing number of Snohomish County men who received reduced sentences after killing people as teenagers.
In late 2021, George filed a motion seeking a new sentence after he got 24 years for bludgeoning his guardian, Gina Latshaw, to death in 2014. The motion argued George’s youthfulness played a role in the crime. He was 16 at the time of the slaying.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Langbehn approved the motion, concluding that if the sentencing court considered the “mitigating factors of youth,” George likely would’ve received a shorter sentence.
“Although the parties made comments related to George’s age and traumatic childhood, no party spent significant time discussing youth as a factor in the commission of the crime,” Langbehn ruled, according to court documents.
Since George was sentenced, the state Supreme Court has ruled judges must take age into account in juvenile cases. The legal precedent cited in the appeal, decided in 2017, came from a Pierce County case where a judge sentenced two teens, Zyion Houston-Sconiers and Treson Roberts, to decades in prison for robbing children who were trick-or-treating on Halloween.
In its appeal of Langbehn’s decision, prosecutors conceded the sentencing court did not “appreciate its discretion” to give George a sentence below the standard range under state guidelines. But they argued the judge still considered the mitigating qualities of youth.
The state Court of Appeals agreed with Langbehn, ruling that while comments focused on George’s mental health, and to some extent his youth, none of the comments addressed whether the “hallmark features of immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences” factored into the crime.
While both parties reviewed “voluminous information” about George, much of it was “withheld” from the judge who sentenced George in 2015, according to the Court of Appeals ruling. The trial judge was only given “conclusory statements” related to the future risk George posed.
On Feb. 8, 2014, George called 911 to report he returned home from school to find the door open at the south Everett apartment he shared with his adoptive mother. Police found Latshaw beaten to death in her bed.
The next day, George confessed to detectives. He said he used a coat hanger to disable the security bar Latshaw had recently installed on her bedroom door, then bludgeoned her to death with a dumbbell, according to court documents.
Brad George and Gina Latshaw in an undated family photo. (Photo provided)
The teen tried to cover up the murder by staging a break-in, according to court documents. He tossed Latshaw’s purse in a dumpster and threw other property into nearby bushes to make it look like a robbery.
George reportedly told detectives he had negative thoughts prior to the killing and stared at himself in the mirror to try to get rid of them. He sat on the couch in the living room and continued to think of “gory horror movie scenes,” and had thoughts that his mother was poisoning him with bleach.
In April 2015, George pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Former Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Michael Downes sentenced George to 24 years in prison. At the time, the defendant was 17.
At his sentencing, prosecutors said George had “behavioral issues” for a large part of his life.
“We were able to obtain a great deal of information about his schooling, about his past psychological records,” former deputy prosecutor Paul Stern said in court, “they fill in excess of three three-ring binders in my office.”
George’s mental illness played a significant role in the killing of his mother, who adopted him after his biological father was sent to prison in 2002, prosecutors wrote in court filings at the time.
“There’s just something that is broken,” Stern said in court, “that poses a great danger to folks if it goes unmitigated or untreated.”
In letters submitted to the trial court, family members pleaded with the judge to not give George a light sentence.
“Please, PLEASE, for all of society, sentence him as harshly as possible,” Latshaw’s sister and George’s aunt wrote in a letter.
George is now 25. A date for his new sentencing hadn’t been set as of Friday.
The Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Jonathan Tall: 425-339-3486; jonathan.tall@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @EDHJonTall.
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