BELLEVUE, Wash. — KIRO 7 is digging deeper into the background of Mark Alexander Adams, the man accused of murdering a woman in an alleged intentional hit-and-run outside a YMCA in Bellevue.
The murder charge is not Adams’ first run-in with the law. He was accused of domestic violence over a decade ago, found unfit to stand trial and moved to Western State Hospital.
According to the Department of Corrections, he escaped from alongside another inmate in 2016.
The escape prompted a statewide manhunt. Officials blamed a loose window in their room. A camera on a bus spotted Adams in Des Moines and he was recaptured.
He is now back in jail, charged with first-degree murder.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Man accused of ‘lying in wait’ before running over, killing a woman outside the Bellevue YMCA
“This is incredibly difficult for the victim’s family,” Casey McNerthney of the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said. “To have to go through this just sounds awful.”
Prosecutors claim Adams was “lying in wait” outside the YMCA before he drove into an 88-year-old woman, killing her. They allege he hit two other people in Tacoma before being arrested in Port Townsend the next day.
Investigators said his cell phone location data connected him to all three crime scenes.
Court records obtained by KIRO 7 detail some of what happened over the decade between Adams’ escape and the Bellevue murder.
His mother, sister and brother-in-law all filed restraining orders against him.
Adams’ sister claims in one filing that Adams took a knife from her while she was cooking and used it to threaten both her and her husband. She further alleges he once physically picked her up and threw her out of the house.
“I cannot take his abuse anymore. I am terrified that he is going to act on his many threats to kill me,” she wrote in a legal filing. “He has tried to purchase a gun for ‘protection’ and I am concerned that he will use this on me.”
Adams’ bail is set at $5 million. He is due back in court on Monday.
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