SEATTLE — Four of the seven teens who escaped from Echo Glen Children’s Center last Sunday will be charged as adults, according to new documents released by the King County Prosecutor’s Office.
The four teens will face charges as adults for robbery in the first degree, escape in the first degree, and theft of a motor vehicle, while two of those four have also been charged with unlawful imprisonment. The other three teens will be charged as juveniles for first degree robbery, unlawful imprisonment, first degree escape, and theft of a motor vehicle.
Adult charges for four of the teens are required by state law. One of those four has a previous murder conviction and had also escaped from Echo Glen in January of 2022.
Charging documents provide new details related to this latest escape, starting with how the teens attacked a security guard, took her keys and phone, and then dragged her into a cell before locking her inside. Documents go on to note that the escape appeared to have been “pre-planned at least several hours in advance, with all participants playing key roles,” with the “group communicating with each other at every stage – before the attack, during the attack, and on their way out of the cottage.”
All seven teens are in custody after a statewide search.
Three of the teens who appeared in court on Friday were arrested in Burien, about 30 minutes from the detention center.
The other four teens were arrested in a neighborhood in Vancouver, Wash. in Clark County. They tried hiding at the home of one of their family members, but the family member told them to leave and called 911.
Friday was the second court appearance for three of the teens.
KIRO 7 Reporter and Anchor Linzi Shelton dug into the facility’s lengthy history of issues as well. She found out there have been eight escapes at Echo Glen in the last four years.
Documents released Friday further detail how the teens “successfully manipulated staff members,” two of whom were seen “casually interacting with the inmates, hugging several of them, allowing another to take the cordless phone off the control desk without repercussion, allowing an inmate to use their flashlight, allowing inmates to pretend that spray bottles are guns and point them at staff members’ heads, [and] allowing the inmates to chase each other around the building and wrestle each other.”
“At numerous points in time the staff leave the control desk with the computer that locks and unlocks cells unattended while inmates have access to it,” documents went on to say.
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