A Snohomish County Superior Court jury deliberated a couple of hours Thursday and half a day on Friday before convicting Curtis Eugene Graham of first-degree assault and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The jury agreed with prosecutors that Graham, 38, fired two shots from close range into a car Jan. 14, seriously wounding the driver at a south Snohomish County workplace.
The panel rejected a defense argument that Graham was not even there and instead was set up for a conviction by his ex-girlfriend.
Deputy prosecutor Paul Stern said he probably will ask Judge Ellen Fair to sentence Graham to 20 years in prison on Aug. 31.
Graham was accused of shooting the driver of a car as the victim was dropping off Graham’s ex-girlfriend at work in the 1900 block of 220th Street SE in Bothell.
The woman allegedly saw Graham and ran inside her workplace to get help. The victim started to drive off, and two shots were fired. One hit the 45-year-old man in the left side.
“What happened seems quite clear,” Stern told jurors Thursday. Evidence shows it was Graham who fired the shots, and it was Graham who ran away, he said.
Stern said it was a case of escalating violence that started with harassment, slashed tires and a brick thrown through the ex-girlfriend’s window.
Graham and the woman broke up in December, and she claims he flooded her cellphone with harassing and threatening calls.
The state had it wrong, public defender Kathleen Kyle told jurors. There was no stalking or harassment, she said, and the ex-girlfriend set up Graham. Most important, she said the state didn’t prove that it was Graham who fired the pistol.
“Not only is there nothing linking Curtis Graham to the shooting, there’s nothing linking him to the tire slashing” and harassment, Kyle told jurors.
Police arrested Graham a few hours after the shooting. He told officers he had thrown his pistol into Lake Washington. The gun never was recovered. He also told police that he “let off two shots, and that’s all I know,” according to his statement to police.
Kyle said the statements were obtained only after Graham was interrogated for hours.
Detectives “didn’t stop until they got what they wanted, and then they stopped,” Kyle told jurors.
The jury disagreed.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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