SEATTLE, Wash. — Forty-year-old Stephen Jeffries Jr. was killed while attending a New Year's Eve party at a home in the 9200 block of 16th Avenue Southwest in Seattle.
Jeffries was shot twice by an unknown gunman just before midnight on Tuesday.
He died at Harborview Medical Center a short time later from gunshot wounds to his upper chest and lower torso.
A 33-year-old woman was shot in the hand outside the same party, and will recover.
The Seattle Police Department is investigating, and has not revealed much information or a suspect description.
But Jeffries’ family members told KIRO 7 Reporter Amy Clancy that a man they don’t know argued with Jeffries at the party.
According to family members who were with Jeffries on Tuesday, when he tried to leave the home, the other man pushed him down and wrestled with him, then shot him twice and ran.
Jeffries’ mother, Michelle Jeffries, knows too well the pain of losing a child.
Her younger son, William Jeffries, was shot and killed outside a White Center house party in January of 2002 when he was 18.
The killer of William Jeffries was arrested, but not prosecuted because he claimed to have acted in self-defense. The fact the man who shot her son three times didn’t serve a jail sentence still angers Michelle Jeffries. “I just got over the fact that William is gone,” she told Clancy from her home in West Seattle. “Now Stevie’s gone too.”
Stephen Jeffries was a 20-year employee of Seattle Public Utilities.
He was the father of four daughters, aged 3 to 22 years old. “He was a very loving father,” his mother said. “He would take his girls out, you know? Just love them up.”
Now that Michelle Jeffries has lost her only two sons to gun violence, she hopes at least Stephen’s killer is found, prosecuted and convicted.
“I’m hoping and I’m going to keep praying that when this guy gets caught, he’s going to jail for a long time. No excuses anymore,” she said.
KIRO
