SEATTLE — A 13-year-old has been charged with manslaughter for the shooting death of his cousin in a Seattle apartment last month.
On May 29, a group of young people were hanging out in a near-empty apartment on Martin Luther King Jr Way in Seattle’s Rainier Valley neighborhood. The apartment was in the process of being moved out of, according to court documents.
Around 11:30 p.m. that night, 911 got a call from someone who said their friend was playing with a gun and shot himself.
When police arrived, they found a 17-year-old down by a door with a single gunshot wound to his head. Court documents say the teen was clutching $21 in his left hand.
The 17-year-old was taken to Harborview Medical Center, where he died from his injuries two days later.
Police initially believed his death was a suicide.
However, on the day the teen died, his aunt called 911 to report that her 13-year-old son was allegedly involved in the death.
She told police that her son said he accidentally shot his cousin while playing with the slide, according to court documents.
“He [the suspect] first tells me that he [the victim] shot himself. I looked at him dead in his face and for... that was, we knew he [victim] wouldn’t have done that. So, I told him that [victim] wouldn’t have killed himself. And so, I was like, ‘you tell me the truth. You know what I’m saying. I’m not a cop, you know what I’m saying,” the woman recalled to Seattle police about her son, according to court documents.
The medical examiner determined the victim’s death was a homicide, and that the gunshot wound and direction of travel of the bullet were “atypical of suicide,” court documents say.
Surveillance video from the apartment allegedly shows the teen running away from the building after the stabbing, according to court docs.
His parents urged him to turn himself in, prosecutors say.
KIRO 7 is not naming the suspect or the victim due to their ages.
The 13-year-old has been charged with first-degree manslaughter and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. The manslaughter charge comes from “recklessly causing the death of a human being,” according to charging documents.
The investigation is still ongoing.
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