KING COUNTY, Wash. — The Fall City teenager accused of killing his five family members and hurting another will learn soon whether he will be tried as an adult.
The two-week decline hearing wrapped up Wednesday – and closing arguments will happen Thursday afternoon.
When it comes to sentencing for a murder trial, being tried as over or under 18 years old makes a huge difference in the length of the sentence. If found guilty under the age of 18, the suspect could be out of jail less than ten years after the murders happened.
The defense called up several experts, including an author and scholar, who described dozens of religious books found in the family’s library – many were about parenting and how to get kids to be obedient.
“The expectation for [the] children is obedience, or punishment; the expectation for parents is to obey these frameworks or experience either suffering or the pain of seeing your child choose a different path, or they come with eternal stakes, and eternal salvation is at stake in a number of these,” Marissa Burt, Author and Scholar of White American Evangelicalism, explained Wednesday.
A forensic child psychiatrist was also called by the defense as a witness. Dr. Bradley Peterson told the court the teen’s mental health had deteriorated rapidly in the lead-up to the attack.
During the two-week hearing, the teen’s defense team did not deny the allegations that the teen killed his family, but rather focused on what they describe as an abusive environment inside the home that led to isolation, neglect of medical care, and fear for all five children who lived in the home.
The teen’s maternal grandmother also took the stand.
KIRO 7 News has been covering this case for two years now.
In October 2024, King County prosecutors say the then-15-year-old teenager shot and killed his three siblings and parents and shot and hurt his 11-year-old sister at their home in Fall City.
Police say his sister was shot in the neck, but she played dead until he left the room and then went to a neighbor’s house for help.
At the time of the murders, police say the suspect was two weeks away from his 16th birthday. As a result, whether he should be tried as a juvenile or an adult has been up in the air. If he was 16 at the time of the murders, he would be automatically tried as an adult.
KIRO 7 will have live coverage of the closing arguments Thursday starting at 4 p.m.