By Sara Jean Green / The Seattle Times
Two men were charged this week in connection with a July shooting at a Kent bus stop that likely left a 15-year-old boy paralyzed with possible neurological deficits from oxygen deprivation, according to King County prosecutors.
Terrance Lombard, a 20-year-old Pacific man who was released from prison in December and was being supervised by the state Department of Corrections for a 2018 robbery, was arrested at his home early Tuesday, jail and court records show. He was charged Thursday with first-degree assault, second-degree assault and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, accused of shooting the 15-year-old boy and a bystander, charging papers say.
Jaylyn Garcia-Davis, 25, of Federal Way was arrested Wednesday night in Seattle’s Crown Hill neighborhood and charged Thursday with first-degree assault, accused of shooting a 16-year-old boy in the chest, say the charges. Garcia-Davis has limited ties to Washington and was sentenced to three years in a Nevada prison after he was convicted in 2015 of conspiracy to commit murder, robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm, according to King County prosecutors and the Nevada Department of Corrections.
Both men remain jailed in lieu of $750,000 bail, jail records show.
“In this case, within a second or two of each other, the defendants each individually fired into a group of people, striking seven total victims. Two of those victims were not even affiliated with the group they had been verbally arguing with just prior to the shooting,” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Jennifer Phillips wrote in charging papers. “This shooting occurred in broad daylight on a busy street with a bus shelter and numerous businesses and drivers and pedestrians in the area.”
Four of the shooting victims, including the two injured teenagers, are brothers. The brothers’ 13-year-old uncle witnessed the shooting that also injured a 15-year-old friend of the brothers, charging papers say.
According to the charges:
Just before 6 p.m. on July 13, Des Moines police Officer Doug Weable was flagged down in the 23200 block of Pacific Highway South in Kent and found multiple victims shot on the sidewalk in front of a bus stop. Weable radioed for help and was quickly joined by additional officers from both the Kent and Des Moines police departments.
Seven victims, including the four brothers and their friend, were shot: The 15-year-old brother was shot in the lower back and buttocks and was the most critically injured. His 16-year-old brother was shot in the chest; an older brother was shot in the hand, and the fourth brother was shot in the right hip. Their 15-year-old friend was shot in the leg.
Two bystanders were also hit: A 49-year-old man was shot in the thigh and another man was struck in the leg by a round that ricocheted off the sidewalk.
All of the victims except the 15-year-old friend and the man hit by the ricochet were taken to Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center.
Citing information from doctors at Harborview, a Kent police detective wrote in the charges that the 15-year-old boy’s spine was damaged “and he is likely paralyzed from the lower back down.” The detective noted the boy “also sustained damage to his lungs, causing prolonged oxygen deprivation and he may have diminished mental capacity,” the charges say.
Though the boy has been taken off a ventilator and can speak, as of Monday he was still unable to provide police with a statement, according to the charges.
Based on witness statements, video-surveillance footage, cellphone data and tips called into police, detectives learned a crowd of 15 people were at the bus stop, and a man later identified as Garcia-Davis was standing in the median in the middle of Pacific Highway South. He was staring at the group of brothers and argued with one of them “about who was staring at who,” the charges say.
Garcia-Davis crossed the street to the bus shelter, where he was joined by a man later identified as Lombard along with two men and two women. Their group walked up to the brothers’ group and confronted them “about being disrespectful,” and the two groups “argued for some time about who was disrespecting whom,” according to the charges.
After crossing the street and loading their belongings into the trunk of another friend’s car in preparation for a fight, the brothers’ group returned to the bus shelter and confronted the other group. After a two-minute argument, Lombard pulled a gun and started firing, striking the 15-year-old brother, who collapsed on the sidewalk, say the charges. One of the bystanders was seen on the video footage limping off to the south.
As Lombard ran north, Garcia-Davis fired a second volley of shots, hitting the 16-year-old and one of his brothers, charging papers say. Police later recovered six .40-caliber shell casings from the spot where Garcia-Davis had been standing when he opened fire. He too ran north before cutting through a parking lot, where he got into a car and was driven from the scene.
Additional video-surveillance footage showed that Garcia-Davis was dropped off in the 2900 block of South 219th Street in Des Moines, about one mile north of the shooting scene.
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