EVERETT, Wash. — A 17-year-old Spokane girl and a 20-year-old Tacoma man have been arrested, along with a man who is already in prison, in a murder-for-hire plot that led to the killing of the intended victim's sister, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office.
The two were arrested on charges of aggravated first-degree murder and first-degree criminal conspiracy to commit murder in the fatal shooting of 24-year-old Alisha Canales-McGuire in Everett in 2017.
Detectives say they believe the two suspects were paid to kill the victim’s sister, Amanda Canales, by Canales’ ex-husband, 31-year-old Kevin Lewis, but instead killed her sister.
Lewis is currently serving 39 months in prison after he was convicted in late 2018 of two counts of second-degree assault against his ex-wife. Police say Canales was beaten so badly she had to be hospitalized.
Lewis was also arrested on the same charges as the two suspects, as well as for investigation of first-degree solicitation to commit murder.
An extensive investigation by major crimes detectives, including evidence gathered from social media accounts, cellphones, and search warrants to Apple and Google, led them to develop probable cause for the arrests.
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Police say Canales-McGuire was shot to death in the doorway of her sister's Everett home while her young nephew and two nieces were sleeping inside in the early morning hours of Sept. 20, 2017.
She had been staying there watching the children while her sister, Amanda Canales, was out of town on a business trip. It is believed that Canales was the intended target of the murder-for-hire by her ex-husband, according to the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.
Detectives say they believe the two suspects were approached by Lewis, who offered them several thousand dollars to kill his ex-wife. The two drove from Spokane, where they were both living at the time of the murder, to Snohomish County.
Authorities say cellphone records put the phones of both suspects at locations consistent with traveling together and with the timing of the shooting.
Detectives say the 20-year-old man suspected in the killing posted photos on social media showing off several hundred-dollar bills a few hours after the murder, and the 17-year-old suspect allegedly bragged to several acquaintances that she’d been hired to kill someone in Snohomish County.
The man is being held in the Snohomish County Jail and the teenage girl is being held in the Denney Juvenile Justice Center.
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