EVERETT — Hayden Cepa called the morning he mixed firearms and alcohol the biggest mistake of his young life.
Cepa, 20, fired a high-powered rifle in two different neighborhoods last spring. He didn’t aim at anyone or anything. There were plenty of homes around, though. A video from a Marysville neighborhood showed him firing the gun out of a vehicle. He shot the gun off earlier in an Arlington neighborhood.
“It is only because of luck that no one was seriously hurt,” Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Elise Deschenes wrote in court papers.
A jury last month convicted Cepa of one count of drive-by shooting and one count of unlawful discharge of a firearm. He was sentenced March 7 to 18 months in prison. He has already served nearly a year in jail awaiting trial.
“I realize I screwed up,” Cepa said, adding that he needs to get his life back on track.
Deschenes asked for the high-end sentence of nearly two years, saying that Cepa had endangered the lives of people, all in the name of showing off.
“He said he was so intoxicated and trying to be so manly that he didn’t know he was firing into a neighborhood,” she said.
Defense attorney Caroline Mann asked for leniency, arguing that the facts of the case didn’t warrant the maximum sentence.
“This is a completely different scenario than most other drive-by shootings,” she said.
Her client wasn’t targeting anyone. It was early in the morning and there was no evidence that anyone was in danger of being hit.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge George Appel called Cepa’s actions “reckless” and “foolish.” The judge said there was no indication the shootings were gang-related or that the defendant was trying to intimidate anyone.
“What this was was a drunken foolish act with a firearm,” Appel said. Someone easily could have been killed by a falling bullet.
The judge ordered Cepa to undergo an evaluation for alcohol or substance abuse. He also ordered the defendant to forfeit his rifle to the Arlington Police Department for destruction.
Cepa’s aunt remains charged with drive-by shooting. She allegedly was driving while her nephew was firing his AR-15 out the passenger window of her vehicle.
Carolyn Cepa’s trial is scheduled for the end of April.
Multiple people called 911 on April 22 to report gunfire on 140th Place NE in Marysville. The area is residential with homes on both sides of the road. Arlington police also had received reports of gunfire about four miles away in the 18500 block of Smokey Point Boulevard.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
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