A King County District Court judge found probable cause Friday for second-degree murder against a 28-year-old woman accused of fatally stabbing a man last week in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. Her bail was set at $2 million.
Seattle police arrested the woman Thursday at a home in Edgewood, Pierce County, in connection with the March 10 stabbing, according to police and the probable cause statement. Mark Mendez, 55, who was stabbed in his stomach and armpit, died from his injuries six days later at Harborview Medical Center.
The Seattle Times is not naming the woman because she has not been charged. Criminal charges are expected to be filed next week.
Mendez called 911 just after 1:30 a.m. and reported he had been stabbed five minutes earlier in the hallway of a nearby apartment building, the probable cause document says. Officers found him in the 2100 block of First Avenue and he told them he had met two women at Shorty’s, a bar on Second Avenue, and accompanied them to the apartment building, according to the statement.
Mendez, who was unarmed, told officers he decided to leave because he didn’t want to pay for a sexual encounter and was stabbed with a folding knife as he was leaving, the probable cause statement says. Video-surveillance footage from the building showed he walked inside with the two women at 1:20 a.m. and walked out of the building alone nine minutes later.
The building’s lobby camera captured the 28-year-old woman get off the elevator but then quickly get back on just as a police patrol vehicle parked outside the building’s glass front doors; cameras then captured her and the second woman, a building tenant, exit the building through the basement parking garage, the statement says.
Police also obtained video footage from Shorty’s, which showed the two women and a man arrive at the bar just after midnight, 40 minutes before Mendez walked in alone and took a seat at the bar, according to the probable cause statement. The man chatted with Mendez and when he walked away, he rubbed his fingers together “in a manner that appeared to be a money gesture,” the statement says. The two women then instigated a conversation with Mendez before leaving with him, the document says.
During the police investigation, detectives matched the 28-year-old woman’s driver’s license photo to her Instagram account and profile on an adult website offering paid sex, according to the statement. When she was arrested, the woman appeared to have an eye injury, scratches on her wrist and neck and a C-shaped cut on one of her fingers, the probable cause statement says.