A King County District Court judge Thursday found probable cause to hold a 29-year-old man on investigation of homicide after sheriff’s deputies found his mother’s body inside her Shoreline apartment early Wednesday, according to prosecutors.
The man remains jailed in lieu of $2 million bail. The Seattle Times does not typically name suspects until criminal charges are filed. Prosecutors expect to charge the man Tuesday.
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet released the woman’s identity or cause and manner of death, but public records show she was 70.
A neighbor called 911 and requested a welfare check around 9:20 a.m. Wednesday after noticing the woman’s car was still in its assigned spot outside an apartment building in the 1500 block of Northwest 195th Street, according to the probable cause statement outlining the sheriff’s case against the woman’s son. The neighbor explained the woman should have been at work by that time and also reported hearing screams from her apartment around 2 a.m., the statement says.
The woman had obtained a domestic violence protection order May 6 that stipulated the son wasn’t to go within 1,000 feet of his mother’s residence, according to the statement.
When deputies knocked on the woman’s door, her son answered and acknowledged that he knew he was in violation of the no-contact order, the statement says. He was arrested.
The man claimed his mother was at work but changed his statement when deputies pointed out his mother’s car was still at the scene, according to the statement. When deputies were unable to reach the woman by phone, they forced entry into the apartment and found her decapitated body in a bedroom, the statement says.
The man had what appeared to be superficial, self-inflicted cuts on his wrists and cuts on both hands, the statement says.
The woman’s death is being investigated as the 11th domestic-violence homicide in King County this year, according to preliminary data compiled by The Seattle Times with information from police, prosecutors and the medical examiner. At the midpoint of 2022, there have been an estimated 49 homicides countywide.
Sixteen of King County’s 110 homicides last year involved domestic violence, according to prosecutors and data compiled by The Seattle Times.
Eighteen of the county’s roughly 116 homicides committed in 2020 were designated as crimes of domestic violence, up significantly from 2019, when there were four domestic-violence homicides among the county’s 73 killings.
Information from The Seattle Times archives is included in this story.