EVERETT, Wash. — Several Lake Stevens residents told a jury Wednesday about gunshots and bullet holes the same night a 15-year-old girl was randomly shot and killed while out walking with her friends.
Witnesses described bullets hitting their homes hours later.
Stacy McAllister said she woke up around 1 a.m. on June 2, 2013, to the sound of a gunshot and glass breaking.
“I immediately got out of bed and stood in the bedroom doorway trying to figure out what was going on,” McAllister said. “The blinds had been blown apart and the lampshade was crooked.”
She said she found a metal fragment in her kitchen that had not been there before.
Conley was killed the night of June 1, 2013. Nearly a month later, police arrested Erick Walker, then a 26-year-old Boeing employee who detectives said was randomly shooting from his Pontiac G6 that night.
Other shootings, like the one at McAllister’s house, were reported the night of Conley’s death, and in the weeks after the shooting the State Patrol crime lab worked on ballistics tests for some of the bullets found at the scene of Conley’s shooting and the other shooting locations.
Detectives came up with a list of possible weapons, and a list of people in the area who had recently bought similar guns.
Police said bullets from all the shooting scenes were from the same Ruger-style gun and found a Facebook photo that showed Walker with the same style gun. Prosecutors say it’s clear Walker was the premeditated killer, and that he acted with “extreme indifference to human life” the night he killed Molly. They tracked him through gun records.
But investigators never found the bullet that killed Conley or the gun police say Walker used.
The witnesses who testified Wednesday described the various bullet holes found in their homes and cars from the same night.
A Lake Stevens council member, Marcus Tageant, said he called police when he saw holes in his house the next morning. Police found a bullet lodged in the wall.
A Lake Stevens High School student said she was babysitting her younger sister that night, when a bullet flew three feet above her head.
“I heard a loud, sharp ring. And it sounded a lot like the rocket hit the house,” she said.
At first, she said she thought someone had thrown a rock at the house. She told the jury she did not make the connection to Conley’s murder until they found a small hole in the wall. They called police, who found a bullet lodged there.
Brad Hurst, who had gone to sleep earlier, woke up between 2 and 2:30 a.m. to a loud sound.
“Not like anything I’d really heard before. It was very loud. And the only way I could describe it is a metal on metal high impact,” he said.
He didn’t notice anything unusual until he started driving his car the next day and seeing a bullet hole in the back rear passenger window.
Defense attorneys for the suspect, Erick Walker, asked questions suggesting that some witnesses never heard the shots and that they did not see who might have fired them.
Want to talk about the news of the day? Watch free streaming video on the KIRO 7 mobile app and iPad app, and join us here on Facebook.
KIRO
