Prosecutors filed numerous felony charges this week against three suspects in connection with four separate shootings, all committed with assault-style rifles. An elderly newspaper deliveryman was wounded, but none of the others targeted was hit during the shooting spree.
Criminal charges filed against three people paint a disturbing picture of innocent people indiscriminately caught up in gang-related violence, which was made all the more terrifying by the use of assault-style rifles, according to police and King County prosecutors.
Charging documents detail four of the five shootings so far attributed to the same suspects, though at least three more people are suspected of being involved in some of them.
Though all three suspects are described as “gang involved,” none of the shooting victims have any gang ties, according to charging documents.
Melissa Langi, a 23-year-old Tukwila woman, has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree assault, with four of the counts also carrying firearms enhancements, charging papers say. Langi, who has no prior criminal convictions, is the girlfriend of a Tukwila gang member whose gang is at war with a gang based in Seattle’s Holly Park and New Holly neighborhoods, the charges say.
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Langi was arrested May 26 in connecting with the four shootings in Kent and Seattle and remains jailed in lieu of $750,000 bail, jail records show. Charging papers say Langi is the owner of two rifles, an AK-47 and an AR-15, both used in the shootings, along with a .45-caliber pistol.
Rodney Strickland, 17, of SeaTac is charged as an adult with five counts of first-degree assault, with two of the counts carrying firearms enhancements, as well as one count of second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, charging papers say.
Strickland was arrested May 31 and he too remains jailed in lieu of $750,000 bail, according to jail records.
Isiah Lewis, an 18-year-old whose last known address is in Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood, was arrested in Tacoma on May 31. He has been charged with six counts of first-degree assault, with three of the counts carrying firearms enhancements, the charges say. He is also charged with one count of second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. His bail was set at $1 million, jail records show.
All three are to be arraigned June 19 at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.
On April 24, Langi, accompanied by Lewis, purchased an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle from a Renton pawnshop, charging papers say. Later that night, Langi was driving her car with Strickland in the front passenger seat, and the two followed another vehicle to the 2400 block of South 260th Street in Kent, the charges say.
The Kent family of four somehow avoided injury when their house was sprayed with gunfire.
“The unsuspecting victims arrived home, got out of their car and were walking to their front door when Langi drove by the family’s home and Strickland fired approximately 19 rounds at the family with the AK-47 assault rifle,” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Jason Simmons wrote in charging papers.
“The motive for the shootings appears to be the shooting itself,” to test out the newly purchased firearm and “possibly as an attempted thrill killing,” he wrote.
Around 2:30 a.m. on April 30, Seattle police responded to a shooting at a house in the 3900 block of South Juneau Street, where a schoolteacher was asleep inside, according to the charges. Langi was again behind the wheel and once at the house, Strickland, armed with the AK-47 rifle, Lewis, armed with an AR-15 rifle, and an unnamed accomplice, who was armed with a 9-mm handgun, opened fire, say the charges. At least 30 rounds were fired into the house, police said.
“Detectives understand that the defendants mistakenly believed the home was occupied by rival gang members, which motivated their attack on the residence,” Simmons wrote in charging papers.
Langi was driving Strickland, Lewis and two other passengers on May 3 when the men opened fire on a Toyota Camry on Holly Park Drive South near 32nd Avenue South, charging papers say. Inside the Camry was a trio of friends heading home to Holly Park from Alki Beach. Twenty-nine rounds were fired, two of them striking the windshield, but none of the occupants was hit, say the charges.
On May 4, Seattle police recovered 51 shell casings — from two rifles and three handguns — from a shooting scene in the 800 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Way, where an elderly couple delivering newspapers were injured, say charging papers.
The wife suffered cuts to her face from broken glass and two of the 26 bullets fired into the couple’s car hit the husband, who spent two weeks at Harborview Medical Center, according to the charges.
The couple “had the grave misfortune of driving past the defendants at 3 a.m.,” Simmons wrote in charging documents.
A fifth shooting, at a Chevron gas station in Tukwila, is also alluded to in charging documents. It appears Langi and Lewis are both suspects, but the details of their involvement is not known.
A Tukwila police spokesman, citing the ongoing investigation, was unable Thursday to provide information about that shooting.
Police — who used ballistic evidence to connect the AK-47 and AR-15 to the shootings — searched Langi’s house and found the AK-47 under her bed, the charges say. The AR-15 rifle was found in a search of Strickland’s girlfriend’s house, the charges say.
Information in this article, originally published June 8, 2017, was corrected June 9, 2017. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the ages of suspects Rodney Strickland, who is 17, and Isiah Lewis, who is 18.