EVERETT — The verdict was swift.
Hours after receiving the case, a Snohomish County Superior Court jury convicted Tye Fleischer of fatally shooting two people and attempting to kill a third in 2015.
He’s expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Jurors heard conflicting stories about how Fleischer ended up in the driveway of an Everett house where the gunfire erupted last year.
Prosecutors argued the Everett man planned to kill a drug dealer as well as a tenant at the clean-and-sober house he managed who’d relapsed. They believe he also planned to turn the Ruger 9mm handgun on himself.
Fleischer, 39, had relapsed on methamphetamine. The drug already had cost him his wife and children, and he was despondent over using again, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson said.
He called 911 shortly after opening fire last February and told a dispatcher he’d killed two people.
“So I’m a junkie. I got clean. My kids deserve a better father. I’m just taking out a couple pieces of (expletive) that (expletive) hurt and kill people while I’m doing it because I know people really well and I know these people have done it,” Fleischer said.
Kevin Odneal and Irene “Deni” Halverson died. A second woman, who was shot in the pelvis, survived.
Fleischer’s issue was with Odneal and the survivor. Fleischer had never met Halverson. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Matheson said.
The defense offered a different version. It argued that Fleischer wasn’t a man contemplating suicide. He’d gone to Odneal’s place to ask him and the survivor to stay away from the clean-and-sober house because his children were coming for a visit. The meeting, the defense argued, resulted in confrontation and Fleischer shot in self-defense.
Jurors rejected that account.
They found Fleischer guilty of two counts of aggravated murder as well as one count of attempted first-degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm. He faces a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Sentencing is set for Monday.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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