(Image: Seattle Police Department)
Police are working to tie a flurry of armed robberies at Capitol Hill-area convenience stores to a string of nearly 80 increasingly violent hold-ups across Seattle and King County.
The Seattle Police Department says a task force arrested a group of teens and an adult suspect Thursday after tracking the group to Federal Way and chasing them down in a stolen mercedes:
The targets of the majority of these robberies were gas stations and late-night fast-food restaurants. The group would often consist of 2-3 males wearing facemasks and hooded clothing. The suspects would show up in a stolen vehicle which was either taken in a vehicle theft or a carjacking. They would enter the store, prop the door open, and point guns directly at the employees demanding they open the cash register. In many cases they would destroy computers they believed were tied to surveillance footage.
CHS reported here on Capitol Hill-area robberies possibly related to the group including a Friday night, October 4th hold-up at the Circle K on 12th Ave near Seattle University where the store and multiple customers were robbed at gunpoint. Less than 30 minutes later, the 7-Eleven at 15th and Denny was also help up at gunpoint where police say the suspect stole cash from the register along with a wallet and phone. The primary suspect was described a black male in his 20s, skinny and around 5’10”, wearing a black tracksuit and black ski mask, and carrying a black handgun with an extended magazine.
Police said the suspect description was the same as an armed robbery last month at the E Madison 7-Eleven.
The E Madison 7-Eleven case is one of several police say they have already tied to the group of teens.
Police say video surveillance and fingerprints collected at the scene of the robberies are hoped to tie the suspects to more of the cases under investigation and that more cases are likely to be identified once the younger suspects are booked into juvenile detention at 12th Ave’s Children & Family Justice Center and fingerprinted.
Two handguns were recovered during the Federal Way arrests with a third located inside the vehicle.
SPD says it believes the group is responsible for 78 robberies, carjackings, burglaries, shootings, and auto thefts within King County.
SPD says it is working with King County Sheriff’s, Des Moines, Auburn, Normandy Park, Tukwila, Bellevue, Issaquah, Redmond, Kent, and Washington State Patrol to investigate the cases.
The King County Prosecutor’s office says the adult in the case was arrested for investigation of unlawful gun possession with charging decisions set to follow this week. A 16-year-old was arrested for investigation of robbery and investigation of unlawful possession of a firearm. A 15-year-old in the case was arrested on a warrant for a previous case that he is on supervision for related to Taking a Motor Vehicle Without Permission in the Second Degree and Robbery in the Second Degree. The fourth teen, another 16-year-old, was not booked.
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These kids need to learn about consequences. I am not wanting to see lives ruined for a bad impulse at age 16 or 14 or 12 but they need to see some consequences. I think back at me at 14 and cringe but I never robbed a store and patrons at gunpoint. Meanwhile Dow Constantine “close the youth jail.” Don’t know that these kids should serve time, though it sounds like it–78 crimes was it– but for sure Dow Constantine has to go.
The laws are the same everywhere in regards to Juveniles.
Dow didn’t make those laws. The SCOTUS is the one you should focus on.
Stumpy is obviously referring to the King County plan to close the youth jail, not juvenile sentencing laws.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/02/08/king-county-to-delay-closure-of-youth-jail-until-at-least-2028/
I DO know that they should serve time. Armed robbery is a serious felony!
Thank you SPD….excellent work! Now prosecute the criminals to the fullest extent of the law!
Excellent work isn’t arresting people after 80 offenses. Excellent work would intervening in the first instance. Excellent work would be a federal banning of fire arms sales so we don’t have to deal with kids running around with guns and the police unable to stop it until there’s been 80 instances.
Unfortunately, SCOTUS has interpreted our constitution as allowing the sale and ownership of guns to private individuals with limited checks. So our options are throw our hands up or come up with other solutions. You repeating the same idea of banning guns would be helpful in any other country, but in the US of A is yelling into the wind. Unless you have a grand plan to convince Mississippi, Texas, Alabama etc. to approve changing the second or have a way of immediately altering the make up of the supreme court, we are going to need other solutions to keep people from fucking dying from these killing machines today, not tomorrow, not in a decade. Today, full stop.
Sooper work!