PIERCE COUNTY, WA – A Washington man is facing a murder charge in connection the fatal shooting of the mother of his child in Pierce County, as per a recent announcement from the local sheriff’s department. The man, who is of 42 years of age, was taken into custody after a standoff that lasted about an hour.
Authorities were initially alerted to a potentially dire situation by a panicked parent who called to request a welfare check for their daughter. She had left earlier in the day to fetch her son from his father’s home, but rather than coming home with her child, the father was the one who returned the boy.
Although repeated attempts to contact the daughter proved futile, the subsequent search took them to Hillside Glenn Apartment Complex where the boy’s father resided. Deputies observing the property spotted the woman’s car parked there. When they entered his apartment using a key, they discovered the woman’s body with a gunshot wound.
This discovery led to bulletins being sent out to other law enforcement agencies with the purpose of effecting an immediate arrest of the suspect. As luck would have it, South Sound 911 dispatchers received a call about a suspicious vehicle parked on a trail in Buckley and it was identified as the vehicle belonging to the suspect from the arrest bulletin.
Despite their efforts to get him to surrender peacefully, law enforcement officers were met with a lack of cooperation from the suspect. Following a standoff that lasted an hour, deputies were able to arrest the man using a taser.
At the time of the report, he had been taken to a hospital for clearance before he would be booked into the Pierce County Jail on a first-degree murder charge.