King County prosecutors charged three known gang members Friday with first-degree murder and two counts each of attempted first-degree murder, 18 months after they are accused of opening fire on rivals in Seattle’s Central District, killing a 19-year-old man and injuring two others.
Charged in connection with the May 10, 2019, shooting at the corner of 21st Avenue and East Union Street are Micah Bishop, 21, of Seattle; Jamier Porter, 22, of Kent; and Davevion Irving, 21, of Tacoma, according to the charges.
Killed in the shooting was Royale Lexing-Walker. Two men, now ages 47 and 22, were also hit by gunfire but suffered non-life-threatening injuries, say the charges.
Bishop was arrested Monday afternoon in a Kent parking lot and does not appear to have prior criminal convictions, the charges say.
Porter, who has a robbery conviction and was arrested June 11, 2019, for unlawfully possessing a firearm later determined to be one of the weapons used in the Central District shooting, remains jailed in lieu of $250,000 bail at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent, jail and court records show.
Irving, who in January was sentenced to a little more than three years in prison for a 2017 armed carjacking and robbery and for unlawfully possessing a firearm in June 2019, is currently serving his sentence at the Clallam Bay Corrections Center on the Olympic Peninsula, according to court records and the state Department of Corrections.
Prosecutors have requested that all three men be held on $2 million bail on the murder and attempted-murder charges. Porter was also charged Friday with first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, say the charges.
Bishop, Irving and Porter are all members of different South Seattle gangs with shared animosity toward Central District gangs, according to the charges. However, the charges do not mention whether the three shootings victims are known gang members or associates or which gangs they may be affiliated with.
Court records do not yet indicate the names of the men’s defense attorneys.
According to the charges:
At 3:07 p.m. on May 10, 2019, Seattle police responded to a report of a shooting at 21st Avenue and East Union Street. Soon after, a second 911 caller reported that three men with gunshot wounds had been driven to Swedish Medical Center’s Cherry Hill campus, less than a mile away.
Lexing-Walker died at the scene and the two other men were taken to Harborview Medical Center.
A witness later told Seattle police three or four men wearing masks and dark clothing approached the corner, fired several rounds, then fled south on 21st Avenue. The intersection is a known gathering place for Central District gang members, according to the charges.
Police recovered 27 shell casings from three different guns outside the Union Market, along with evidence that the shooting victims, who had been just east of the intersection on East Union Street, returned fire.
Police also obtained video-surveillance footage that showed a white Chevy Impala had driven past the group of men on East Union Street, then circled around and parked 300 feet south of Union Market. Three men got out of the car and the footage showed the men each fired multiple rounds at the second group, then ran back to the waiting Impala, which quickly fled south.
The next day, Seattle police located a white Chevy Impala in the parking lot of the Safeway grocery store in the 9200 block of Rainier Avenue South. A young woman, who police knew to be associated with Bishop, was identified as the driver. Police impounded the car.
Her father later told police he had been watching news coverage of the shooting in the late afternoon on May 10, 2019. He went downstairs and saw two men in his living room and noticed both had guns in their pants. The father asked the men if they committed the shooting and they “looked at him funny,” but said no.
The father’s description of the men’s clothing was consistent with what police had seen in the surveillance footage and the men were later identified as Irving and Porter, say the charges.
Police found a photo Bishop had posted to a social-media account two hours before the shooting that showed Bishop seated in a car with two handguns in his lap. Geolocation information from the account also placed Bishop at the shooting scene, according to the charges.
The charges say Bishop sent a text to the woman, instructing her to wipe down the interior of the Impala. In a search of the car, police found Bishop’s fingerprints on two items inside the vehicle and Irving’s fingerprints on the exterior, passenger-side roof.
Police say after his arrest Monday, Bishop admitted to driving the Impala on the day of the shooting but claimed he stayed inside the car; he also identified Porter and Irving by their street names but said he didn’t know the name of his third male passenger, according to the charges.
Bishop, Irving and Porter are scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 25.