Stanwood Suspect Has 5 Burglary Convictions -- 17-Year-Old Being Held In Slaying Of Baby-Sitter; Charges Expected
STANWOOD - The Camano Island teen suspected of killing a 12-year-old girl while she baby-sat five children at a neighbor's house has had numerous run-ins with the law, including several burglary convictions, but does not appear to have committed violent crimes, according to authorities.
The 17-year-old is expected to be tried as an adult on charges of first-degree murder, first-degree rape and first-degree burglary in the beating death of Ashley Jones late Saturday night. (The Seattle Times usually does not name criminal suspects until they are charged.)
Police say a burglar broke into the home where the girl was baby-sitting, apparently through an unlocked door, and beat her to death. The other children, ages 2 to 8, were asleep and uninjured.
The suspect, who had been living at a halfway house in Lynnwood until he fled Friday, had been sentenced to up to 10 months confinement after being convicted of burglary in December.
After that conviction, his fifth, the teen spent four days at Indian Ridge Corrections Center in Arlington, according to Sid Sidorowicz, assistant secretary for the state Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration. The teen then was sent to another group home, but he did not follow the rules there and was sent back to Indian Ridge.
He spent 12 days there, then was sent to the Larch Way group home, Sidorowicz said. At Larch Way, he was supposed to receive counseling with five other juvenile offenders.
Residents are selected for the halfway house - in which residents are escorted to school or work each day and are locked in at night - after a review of their crimes and an assessment of their danger to others and their likelihood to flee.
The teen had committed burglaries - all in Island County - but no violent crimes. Such offenders, Sidorowicz said, without chronic criminal activity or without violent criminal activity, are less likely to re-offend if they serve time in a community-based facility than if they're confined to a more controlled, structured institutional setting.
These juveniles need to learn certain skills to avoid crime, such as anger and impulse management, and drug and alcohol avoidance, which are best learned and practiced in places resembling life out of confinement, he said.
According to Sidorowicz, the boy was first charged with three counts of burglary on Oct. 21, 1995, when he was 15. One of those counts involved a house. Another was a church, from which the teen stole a stereo.
For that, he received a year's probation and community service. An Island County judge deferred a further sentence if he stayed out of trouble.
But in April 1996, he was convicted of another burglary. This time, he got 10 days' confinement and six months supervision. The deferred sentence from the first offenses was revoked and he got an additional 20 days' confinement and six more months of supervision.
The December 1996 conviction landed him in Indian Ridge and then the group homes.
"I think you'd say the state, under the current law, was taking the appropriate levels of escalating penalties," Sidorowicz said. "They gave him a break at the beginning. When he failed to follow that, they didn't disregard it, they gave him a confinement sentence. And the third time, they committed him to the state. This isn't a case where you could say people were ignoring his behavior.
"This is one of those really tragic cases in the juvenile justice world. You look at a case where you know some things the juvenile's done, but they're not predictive of what he might do," Sidorowicz said.
In the death of Ashley, a seventh-grader at Stanwood Middle School, the suspect was arrested Sunday in Stanwood and is being held on $1 million bail.
Authorities would say little about how Ashley was killed or about the rape charge. An autopsy revealed that she died from being hit in the head, according to the Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office.
She was found unconscious and badly beaten when adults returned to the house about 2:30 a.m. Sunday in the 7200 block of Church Creek Loop Northwest.
The youth was arrested at a friend's apartment. Police were led there after more than 150 people were questioned by police and sheriff's officials.
Last night, Stanwood residents struggled with the nightmare of the girl's death, filling a high-school gym with their sorrow and horror.
More than 400 people, young and old, from this rural town of about 3,000 people came to speak, to listen, to weep and to mourn Ashley Jones.
"When I said goodbye to Ashley on the bus Friday, I thought it was going to be goodbye for the weekend," said seventh-grade classmate Shauna Adams.
"I never thought it was going to be goodbye forever."
The owner of the home where Ashley was baby-sitting and where she died, Ron Alumbaugh, spoke haltingly to the crowd at Stanwood High, while holding back tears.
"Hopefully, we can lean on each other, pick up the pieces, and help this town, this community, get back on its feet," Alumbaugh said.
It is a community, about 50 miles north of Seattle, whose sense of security has been shattered. Crime is rare, murder almost unheard of. The last homicide was in 1983 when a 13-year-old girl was bludgeoned to death in a case that was never solved, according to acting Police Chief David Bales.
"One of the benefits of a small town is a lot of people know a lot of people," Bales said. "We had a lot of officers flooding the town looking for this person . . . and somebody called us and said `I know where he is.' "
Family members of the suspect who were contacted on Camano Island and in Stanwood declined to comment. But a girl who claimed to be the suspect's ex-girlfriend said she didn't believe he would murder anyone.
"He has a bad past, but I don't believe he had the heart to do this," said the girl, who declined to be identified.
While at the halfway house, the suspect had been working a $6-an-hour job at United Furniture Warehouse on Highway 99 since Aug. 28.
Manager Ken Coulton, who described the teen as a "half-decent" employee, said he fabricated a plot to leave work before he was to be picked up by a van from the Larch Way group home.
At about 1:30 p.m. Friday, Coulton said, the boy took a phone call.
"And he started talking to someone, saying, `I can't take that time off work. I don't want to lose my job.' "
The teen told Coulton that Larch Way was on the phone, that someone had "broken out" and they needed to round up everyone and interrogate them.
When Coulton asked if he could return later, the boy dialed the phone, appeared to have a conversation and told his boss he could come back at 3:30 or 4 p.m.
"I fell for it hook, line and sinker," Coulton said. "We didn't really know anything was amiss."
Coulton said no one from the halfway house, operated by a private, nonprofit organization, Second Chance, which contracts with the state to run five juvenile group homes, had contacted him about the boy's juvenile-crime history.
He said that even if he had suspected a problem, he had no way to contact Second Chance staff, who usually waited in the van when picking up the boy.
"The whole thing could have been prevented if they had just come into the store and said, "We're here to pick up (the teen).' Then we'd know."
But a Second Chance spokeswoman, Laura Blaske, disputed Coulton's account. She said a staffer from the halfway house had accompanied the boy when he applied at the furniture store and did random checks to ensure he was doing what he was supposed to. Blaske said staff did such a check at 3:30 p.m. Friday and were told the boy was out on a delivery.
But Coulton said the supervisor thought the Second Chance staffer was asking the whereabouts of another worker with the same first name. In any event, Second Chance staff discovered the boy was gone when they arrived at 6 p.m. to pick him up.
Blaske said Second Chance was now working on a policy to promote better coordination with employers and asking them to keep more of a record of the whereabouts of such workers.
Rebekah Denn's phone message number is 425-745-7804. Her e-mail address is: rden-new@seatimes.com
Nancy Montgomery's phone message number is 425-745-7803. His e-mail address is: nmon-new@seatimes.com
Seattle Times staff reporters Vikki Ortiz and Arthur Santana contributed to this report.