EVERETT — Jurors heard conflicting stories about how Tye Fleischer ended up in the driveway of an Everett house where he is accused of fatally shooting two people and wounding a third.
Prosecutors said Fleischer had a two-part plan that night. First, he was going to eliminate a known drug dealer and a tenant at the clean-and-sober house he managed who’d relapsed. Both had caused him grief. The last part of the plan was to turn the Ruger 9mm handgun on himself.
He carried out the first step, firing 10 rounds at three people as they walked out of the garage toward him. His friends and Everett police Capt. Greg Lineberry talked Fleischer out of the second part of the plan, jurors were told Tuesday during opening statements.
“On Feb. 13, 2015, the defendant’s life was coming apart at the seams,” Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson said.
Fleischer had relapsed on methamphetamine. The drug already had cost him his wife and children, and he was despondent over using again, Matheson said.
He called 911 shortly after opening fire 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.
Killed were Kevin Odneal and Irene “Deni” Halverson. A second woman, who was shot in the pelvis, survived.
Jurors were told that Fleischer had been off drugs for about 90 days. He was managing a clean-and-sober house on 41st Street in Everett. The house was owned by Timothy Rehberg. Rehberg has since been busted by federal authorities for drug trafficking and weapons violations.
The woman who survived the shooting also lived at the house. She’d relapsed and started bringing her drug-using friends around, including Odneal, Matheson said.
Fleischer’s beef was with Odneal and the survivor. They’d had a falling out the day before. Fleischer had never met Halverson. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Matheson said.
Fleischer, 39, is charged with two counts of aggravated murder and attempted first-degree murder. If convicted, he faces a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of release.
Defense attorney Karen Halverson painted a different picture of Fleischer. He wasn’t a man contemplating suicide. He’d gone over 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, Halverson said.
There was some sort of confrontation, Fleischer was threatened, and he shot in self-defense, said Halverson, who isn’t related to the victim.
“Tye never intended to harm anyone that day,” Halverson told jurors.
Fleischer had known Odneal for years and knew that he was associated with dangerous people, she added. He was aware that there’d been violence at the house in the past. He was scared to be there, Halverson said.
Odneal lived on 75th Street SE with his elderly mother. He was a small-time dealer who used drugs, Matheson said. “It’s fair to say Kevin Odneal was not a good citizen,” he added.
Two other people had been killed at the house before last year’s violence.
In 2008, a man was shot to death during an argument over drugs and a car. Three years later, police were back at the house, investigating a robbery that turned deadly.
Detectives were last at Odneal’s house in December 2014 when they were investigating an illegal chop shop business there.
Odneal’s lifestyle prompted him to install surveillance cameras around the property, Matheson said. One of those cameras, mounted on an outbuilding, captured last year’s shootings.
The video shows the defendant pull up in a dark-colored van at 6:56 p.m. A minute later Odneal walked up to the gate that divided the driveway from the outbuilding. The men appeared to have a brief conversation. Odneal walked back to the garage.
Odneal told the surviving woman that Fleischer wanted to speak with her. She, Odneal and Halverson exited the garage and walked toward the gate.
“The defendant opens fire and they all drop like sacks of potatoes,” Matheson said.
There’s no evidence that the victims were armed, he said. It took just 15 seconds from when they left the garage to when they were shot, Matheson said.
The trial is expected to stretch into next week.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
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