CAMANO ISLAND, Wash. — Camano Island family says a man shot in the street died while trying to protect them. The suspect—a 30-year-old man—then waited on the side of the road for police to arrive.
It happened in a gated community on the north end of the island. Roughly 75 yards from a community pool full of kids, in the quiet neighborhood of mostly retirees, a body laid in the street for hours.
At one point, it was uncovered while the Island County Sheriff’s Office did their investigation. Neighbors say the incident happened so fast.
“I was spending the day with my granddaughter and we just took the boat to go get some gas in it, make sure it was full before we went crabbing,” explained Jim LaRoche, who lives just a few houses down from the crime scene. “We were probably gone about 15 minutes; we had gone down the road there and nothing was going on then, and then when we came back, it was cordoned off.”
The family who was inside the house at the time of the incident told us the shooter is the homeowner’s ex-boyfriend—the victim, her current boyfriend, who stopped him from coming inside where there were four other people, three of them sleeping, one of them a child.
Police say a man working nearby heard the shot and intervened.
“The contractor that came down the street to find out what was going on, secured the weapon to make sure it was safe—mainly for himself and for the neighborhood, he didn’t know what was going on, so he secured the weapon,” explained Sergeant Laura Price with the Island County Sheriff’s Office.
Then, Price says the suspect just sat on the street and waited to be arrested.
Neither the suspect's nor the victim's names are being released right now.