EVERETT — An Everett man is now charged with first-degree manslaughter in last month’s shooting death of his girlfriend.
Payton Beck-Glessner, 19, died from a single gunshot wound to the chest Dec. 15. She was a graduate of Bothell High School and attended Toni and Guy Hairdressing Academy, according to an obituary.
“She will be loved and missed always but we will remember her sincere smile and laughter, her hugs and kisses, her special bond with children, her humor, and her beauty and grace,” her family wrote.
Prosecutors allege that Jonathan Duncan, 22, shot the young woman while he was handling a semiautomatic handgun. Duncan told police that the shooting was an accident.
He said he’d found the firearm in a ditch along Rucker Avenue and brought it back to the apartment he shared with Beck-Glessner and another couple. Duncan also told police he was unfamiliar with firearms, saying it was the first time that he’d handled a gun other than when he was a kid and tried using a shotgun, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Francesca Yahyavi wrote.
Detectives say the man’s online posts tell a different story. They found photographs of guns on Duncan’s social media accounts. Some of the photographs appeared to have been taken in his apartment. Witnesses also told police that Duncan has experience with firearms, according to court papers.
Police investigating the shooting found the gun disassembled on a couch across the room from where Beck-Glessner had collapsed. A detective investigating the case reported, “it is extremely unlikely and unrealistic to believe that a person with no firearm experience and under tremendous stress … would be able to figure out this correct process in a matter of minutes or seconds as the defendant claimed to officers,” Yahyavi wrote.
Duncan remains jailed on $100,000 bail.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
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