Detectives say the 17-year-old fired wildly at a moving van, with a bullet shattering the leg of a bystander who still can't walk.
King County prosecutors last week charged a 17-year-old Seattle boy as an adult with first-degree assault, accusing him of shooting a bystander in the leg when he exchanged gunfire with people inside a van earlier this month on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.
The Sept. 3 shooting in the 1500 block of East Union Street was captured in its entirety by video-surveillance cameras outside Temple De Hirsch Sinai, a synagogue at 1511 E. Pike St., charging papers say. From the footage, a Seattle police detective recognized Keith L. Sims, who lives two blocks from where the shooting happened, the charges say.
The footage shows that just before 2 p.m. Sept. 3, Sims and another teen were walking east on the north side of East Union, approaching 16th Avenue East, and passed by the victim, a man in his 30s, who was walking with his wife west on the same sidewalk, the charges say. A blue Dodge Caliber, which had been stolen in a carjacking in Renton earlier that day, turned west onto Union from 16th Avenue and stopped in the middle of the street, say the charges.
Almost immediately, one of the teens pulled a gun from his waistband and fired at the vehicle; someone inside the car returned fire and the shooter on the sidewalk continued to “fire wildly” as he ran east, according to charging papers. It was one of Sims’ rounds that struck the bystander, shattering two bones in the man’s leg, the charges say.
Most Read Local Stories
Officers recovered 10 .45-caliber shell casings from the scene and seven casings from a .22-caliber handgun, according to prosecutors.
The victim, who is still unable to walk, picked Sims out of a police photo montage, say the charges.
It’s unclear when, but the charges say Sims was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle and police later found a .22-caliber handgun inside. On Monday, a Seattle police detective received word that there was a preliminary match from a ballistic comparison of the gun found in the vehicle Sims was driving and shell casings from the Sept. 3 shooting, say the charges.
The State Patrol Crime Lab is performing additional forensic work to confirm the hit, the charging papers say.
Sims is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail, presumably in the Youth Services Center because he is a minor. Unlike adult defendants whose names appear in the King County Jail’s online inmate look-up service, the names of juveniles being held in custody do not appear.