In the early hours of July 10, a 63-year-old wheelchair-bound homeless man was fatally assaulted, allegedly by a 25-year-old man at the Bellevue Transit Center, for no apparent reason. The suspect fled but was later arrested by police thanks to information provided by a witness. The homeless man eventually succumbed to his injuries this week.

Here’s the infuriating part: the suspect was recently convicted for violently raping a 16-year-old girl while under investigation for a similar crime, and was only free due to leniency by a King County Superior Court judge.

In fact, he had only been out of jail for 32 hours before he fatally injured the homeless man.

With so much of the focus on the crime in Seattle right now, it’s easy to forget that the problems are not confined to one city in our region. The public safety crisis that Seattle faces right now is one that other cities in King County have and will experience, unless things change.

The recent incident in Bellevue is a microcosm of what plagues communities through the region, and who’s responsible for it.

The suspect was convicted in May of this year for a 2019 rape of a minor that, according to court documents, left the victim incapacitated and with significant bodily injuries. Amazingly, the man was sentenced by King County Superior Court Judge Maureen McKee to just 15 months in King County Jail, with 36 months in community custody. He was let out in July with credit for time served and was supposed to report to his community corrections officer. Instead, he fatally injured an innocent man at random who was incapable of protecting himself. 

Make Your Voice Heard!

Contact the King County Prosecutor’s Office and demand they stop making plea deals with violent serial offenders! Contact King County Superior Court Judge Maureen McKee and tell her to stop being lenient toward violent offenders!

While presumption of innocence until proven guilty is an important legal principle, here’s what we do know about the suspect:

• He previously confessed to raping a 16-year-old girl, who according to detective sustained bodily injuries and was incapacitated due to him forcing her to consume alcohol.
• At the time of his conviction, he was under investigating by Kent Police for a similar rape of another underage girl.
• He was diagnosed in jail with mental illness.
• He has a history of substance abuse.

In other words, he is a textbook archetype of the small number of people responsible for the increased crime rate in the region and who disproportionately make up the majority of misdemeanors and felonies. They are the type of people Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison is targeting who commit petty crime via her High Utilizer program. It’s a program that King County should be implementing, too.

The fact that the suspect fatally injured a homeless man in a public place just after midnight also underscores why the homeless that are incapable of caring for themselves need to be off the streets and in places where they can not only receive care, particularly the handicapped, but be protected from criminals. While drug encampments are responsible for much of the shootings in Seattle, not all homeless are criminals and it is certainly not ok for society to look away when they are the victims of violence, crime, or murder.

But this isn’t just about the homeless. This is about overall public safety. The suspect’s choice of victim was likely a combination of opportunity and vulnerability. Yet, he could have easily chosen someone else. Also, he could have chosen to commit a separate crime, like raping yet another minor.

Also, it’s worth noting that while this crime occurred in Bellevue, the suspect is ostensibly from Renton based on his last known address, though according to court documents he has no ties to Washington state. In other words, he could have carried out his attack in another part of King County.

To the prosecutor office’s credit, they are, at the moment, throwing the book at the suspect, as they should. But it’s worth noting that in the 2019 case they initially did the same when they charged the suspect with second-degree rape, which is a Class A felony and carries a life sentence. However, he pled guilty to third-degree assault with sexual motivation, which is a Class C felony and carries a maximum of five years in jail, plus an additional sexual motivation sentence of up to a year. In other words, he faced a maximum of six years behind bars.

As pitiful as that seems, in the end he was sentenced to just over a year and left jail shortly after his conviction.

The man should have never been released when he was. It was an unconscionable act that has cost an innocent man his life.

There are a lot of questions to ask. Why did the prosecutor’s office accept the man’s plea to a far lesser crime, rather than go to trial after charging him for a crime that carries a life sentence? Why did Judge McKee give a violent rapist such a lenient jail sentence, and did the prosecutor’s office fight for the full six years?

More pertinently, does the prosecutor’s office intend to stand its ground on these new charges, or will they accept yet another plea bargain and have this case conclude with another slap on the wrist?

What is being done to ensure this never happens again?

Lenient judges who won’t even charge their own attackers are a problem in King County, but so is a weak-willed county prosecutor’s office that won’t fight tooth-and-nail for harsh sentences for serial offenders who, as in this case, are quickly back on the streets to rape and kill innocent people and make our communities unsafe.

It is absolutely essential for the sake of public safety throughout all of King County that this case be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

Contact the King County Prosecutor’s Office and demand they stop making plea deals with violent serial offenders!  Contact King County Superior Court Judge Maureen McKee and tell her to stop being lenient toward violent offenders!