FALL CITY, Wash. — The now 17-year-old suspect authorities believe killed nearly his entire family in a Fall City Home in 2024 will have to wait three weeks to determine whether his case will be heard in adult court or juvenile court.
“The culmination of this process is obviously what everybody’s waiting on, so I beg for the patience for a little bit longer. You’ve had two years to live with this, and I’m getting a few weeks to get really caught up,” Judge Veronica Galván said to close proceedings today.
In October 2024, police responded to two early morning 911 calls and found five members of the Humiston family-- including parents Mark and Sarah and three of their kids-- dead from gunshot wounds. An 11-year-old girl of the family survived, and the then 15-year-old boy was arrested.
Galván set her ruling for Oct. 14. Before that, both attorney teams made their closing arguments.
Prosecutors started by poking holes in the defense team’s claims of abuse.
In the nearly-two week hearing, family members close to the Humistons testified the children’s behavior made them believe they were being abused.
“The evidence of abuse: 50 spankings a day, breaking three spoons, lining them up to spank them. That is all their clients’ self-report. No one corroborates that. No one provides any indication that any of that is accurate,” said King County Prosecutor Jason Brookhyser.
Defense attorney Kristen Gestaut reiterated in her closing arguments testimony from the children’s maternal grandmother, Kathryn Ogden, who was aware of spankings and now is the guardian of the surviving girl, who told her grandmother that her siblings would be locked outside of the home without food and water.
“When I asked Ms. Ogden if they got spanked for not spelling a word right. She said, no, it might’ve been two words. Two words,” Gestaut said.
The issue of abuse goes to one of the Kent Factors the court uses to determine if a respondent under 18 is tried in juvenile court, or if the juvenile court declines the case and it heads to adult court. Gestaut claims the abuse stunted the suspect’s emotional development and maturity.
“[He] has really spent the first 15 years of his life in a prison, where he had less freedom than he has now. He has thrived, he has grown, he is matured, he’s changed in a detention. Never in my career have I seen that,” Gestaut said.
Gestaut says he has earned gold status in juvenile detention, has not had a serious incident when inside, is assaulted and doesn’t fight back, helps other inmates and started a book program in the facility. She argues that goes towards another Kent factor—the suspects ability to be rehabilitated.
“This boy deserves a chance, Your Honor. He deserves hope. And the only way he’s going to get that is if he can stay in the juvenile system where he absolutely belongs,” Gestaut argues.
Other Kent Factors are the aggression of the alleged crime and the premeditation or planning it took to commit it. Brookhyser points to two aspects of the investigation that relate to the suspect’s thinking.
First, the gun used in the killings.
“The handgun was already fully loaded, but he knew that that wasn’t going to be enough. So we also grabbed the extra fully loaded magazine. He knew he wanted to have all 15 of those bullets,” Brookhyser said.
The second is his then 13-year-old brother. Law enforcement found the 13-year-old with the gun in his hand in what was supposed to look like a suicide, but the boy had two gun shot wounds. When the suspect called 911, he told dispatcher, and later authorities, that the younger brother had killed the family, something Brookhyser says the autopsy proves is false.
“That is a sophisticated act to stitch together a false story that would allow [the suspect] to get away with killing his whole Family while leading all of us to believe that [the younger brother] was responsible for it. That is terrifying behavior,” Brookhyser said.
Gestaut pointed to testimony from Department of Corrections leaders who said when a juvenile is transferred from juvenile detention into adult court, their rehabilitation regresses.
“This is a child who was severely ill, who was being medically neglected, abused, controlled. And who now, when given just a little bit of love and the smallest amount of support, has blossomed. We would ask, Your Honor, to let him continue growing,” Gestaut said.
Brookhyser said he was concerned about juvenile facilities prioritizing the least restrictive detention possible for detainees, saying the suspect could be released to a group home in a year.
“This case required a court that has the jurisdiction, the power, the discretion to fashion a sentence that is appropriate to what we have, to what is necessary,” he said.