SEATAC, Wash. — New surveillance video of a deadly shooting has been released - on what would have been the SeaTac victim’s 17th birthday.
Sixteen-year-old Christopher Escobar was alone last January when he was shot and killed in front of the Motel 6 on International Boulevard in SeaTac.
Now, a man who says he tried to comfort the teenager has come forward.
He was staying at that same Motel. He says he and his then-girlfriend were staying in room 224 last January 11 when they heard a barrage of bullets.
He came down when the shooting stopped.
“It sounded like fireworks. But it wasn’t fireworks. I looked out the window and it just was gunfire,” said Jonathan Emilio Sandell.
Sandell - who goes by “Loze” - didn’t want to show his face. But he agreed to describe what he heard and saw from his room at the Motel 6.
“Yeah,” he said. “I could see the car. It was a gold Escalade. And there was just fire after fire after fire.”
Sandell says he ran down to help.
“I got down to where he was. Put my coat over him, keep him warm,” said Sandell.
Sandell says he wasn’t making much noise. “As much as, little sounds,” he said. “As much as you can say.”
When asked if he knew the teen would die, Sandell said, “ Yeah. There was no way he was going to make it.”
Escobar would have turned 17 this Monday. His family had a pre-birthday party Sunday to celebrate, complete with a release of balloons.
“Yeah, that’s my baby, always,” said Kimberly Vega, the victim’s mother. “We did a barbeque for him.”
The celebration for his mother is bittersweet.
The last eight months have been “the absolute hardest,” she said. “They took the love of my life. My firstborn son.”
With his killer or killers still on the loose, her undying love for her son is now etched into her arm.
“It says ‘I loved you your whole life,’” she read. “‘I will miss you the rest of mine.’”
She says she has heard very little from the King County Sheriff’s Office about the search for her son’s killer. When KIRO 7 contacted them Monday, they said they had no update.
Vega says she is asking anyone who was here at about 12:43 a.m. the morning of January 11 to please come forward. She desperately wants whoever killed her son to be behind bars.
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