Community Post

Three Charged in Shooting & Attempted Getaway on Jackson

King County Prosecutors have filed charges against the three suspects who were apprehended in Monday’s officer-involved shooting on Jackson Street. 

The first, 28-year old Demetrius Lee James, who we referred to as “Suspect A” in a follow-up story on Tuesday, is charged with Assault in the 2nd degree for an alleged attempt to strike a Seattle police officer with a vehicle as they tried to escape. He’s held in King County Jail on a bail of $40,000, which authorities are attempting to increase to $100,000 due to his “danger to the community and law enforcement.”  He also was found to have an open no-bail warrant for previous parole violations.

The second suspect, 30-year old Ricky Benjamin Valley, aka Kevin Orlando McClain, is charged with Obstructing a Police Officer.  He has an open warrant from California on a weapons charge, and remains in custody in the King County Jail.

A third 17-year old juvenile suspect is also charged with an obstruction charge.  The fourth occupant of the vehicle is still at large.

According to court documents released today by the King County Prosecutors, the incident started as we previously described, when two East Precinct officers noticed a discrepancy between the license plates on the suspects vehicle as it sat parked and occupied in the Star Market parking lot at 20th & S. Jackson.  As one officer tried to talk to the driver of the vehicle, James, the driver, put the car in gear and started driving toward Jackson Street, rapidly accelerating and ignoring officer’s commands to stop.  The second officer heard one of the car’s occupants say “Hit that fucker! Hit that fucker!,” prompting the officer to fire his taser into the open passenger window of the vehicle. The vehicle continued to accelerate towards the first officer, and he responded by firing his service weapon into the vehicle, hitting it five times.

The suspects continued to drive away, heading westbound on Jackson.  At some point the suspects all bailed from the vehicle, with Valley and the juvenile suspect running westbound down the street.  Their vehicle struck another police vehicle that was responding to the call, and the officer in that vehicle was knocked to the ground and then pursued those suspects down the street, capturing Valley about a block away. A citizen who was witnessing the scene captured the juvenile and held him to the ground until additional police arrived.

James ran southbound, and was found hiding in the 1800 block of S. Lane with a gunshot wound to his right hand and a taser dart stuck to his shirt. He told officers “the police shot me.”

Police recovered a loaded revolver from the street near where the suspects bailed from their vehicle. None of the three were eligible to be in possession of a gun.

An arraignment is scheduled for July 23rd at 8:30am for Demetrius James and Ricky Valley.  The third suspect will be arraigned tomorrow at 1pm in juvenile court.

0 thoughts on “Three Charged in Shooting & Attempted Getaway on Jackson

  1. I’m sure they were all about to turn their lives around ’til they got ‘profiled’.

  2. About 5:15 p.m. Monday, two Seattle police officers noticed a white Lexus in the parking lot of the Star Market, located at 1719 S. Jackson St., with front and back license plates that didn’t match.

    The driver who was charged with assault, Demetrius Lee James, 28, ignored an officer’s commands to stop and drove the car in a three-point turn to flee, according to prosecutors. Police say James turned into another officer and that officer could hear a man in the car saying, “Hit that (expletive). Hit that (expletive)!” The officer deployed his Taser through the right front passenger window, but the Lexus still accelerated toward Officer Jonathan Chin.

    “To avoid being run down by the suspect vehicle, Officer Chin fired his service handgun at the vehicle quickly moving to his left as he did so,” according to a July 8 probable-cause document. “The suspect vehicle was struck five times.” http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/archives/173410.asp

  3. I give props to ‘the citizen’ for detaining the juvenile. You don’t know if these punks are packing, or what they will do..Bravo to the officers and the citizen. These dudes are bad news, I wish the bullets would have been more effective.

  4. It would figure that the two adults both had no-bail warrants. Seems like they always do. Makes you wonder how many other people are running around the area with warrants out for them. Hopefully they’ll at least do a little time on the warrants; the other two probably won’t get anything significant for the obstruction charges.

    Interesting that the only charge for the main suspect is assault; no charges for any traffic violations in their 2 block getaway sprint, or for attempting to elude. This jackass is gonna get to keep his drivers license?

    Also, the car’s plates were stolen, but there’s no charge listed for possessing a stolen car, so was the car not in fact stolen, only the plates? If the car was in the clear, it seems like his attempted escape was a pretty extreme action just to avoid getting caught with a warrant for a parole violation.

  5. Oh yeah, and are they gonna charge any of them with a crime for having that gun? The police must have lifted some fingerprints off of it or something, and if none of the suspects were allowed to have one, that would be pretty open and shut, I’d think.