Man guilty in slaying of Tacoma cab driver
ADAM LYNN; Staff writer
A Pierce County jury deliberated for about two hours Wednesday before convicting a 32-year-old Tacoma man of murdering a cab driver last year.
Jurors convicted Jaycee Fuller of first-degree felony murder and premeditated first-degree murder in the death of Mohamud Ahmed, a 22-year-old Somali man who came to the United States to escape the violence in his war-wracked native land.
Fuller will be sentenced March 12 on only one of the convictions. The other will be dismissed. The former cab driver faces a standard-range sentence of 22 years to 28 years, eight months in prison.
He showed no reaction when Superior Court Judge Katherine Stolz read the verdicts, which included a special finding that Fuller used a deadly weapon in the attack on Ahmed.
Prosecuting Attorney Mark Lindquist and deputy prosecutor Grant Blinn contended Fuller slashed Ahmed’s throat and stabbed him in the chest with a knife during a robbery attempt.
A police officer on routine patrol discovered Ahmed’s body lying outside his still-running cab in a South Tacoma parking lot before dawn on March 8.
Police arrested Fuller about a month later.
The trial lasted for about two weeks and consisted mostly of the testimony of police detectives and forensics experts who explained how a trail of circumstantial evidence tied Fuller to the crime.
That evidence included a stocking cap found near the crime scene. Forensics experts found Ahmed’s blood on the outside of the cap and Fuller’s DNA on the inside of the cap, which was emblazoned with the logo of The Keg Steakhouse & Bar.
Fuller received the hat when he worked at the restaurant in 2006.
“That Keg cap was the key to the case,” Lindquist said after the verdict.
During closing arguments Wednesday, Blinn and Lindquist argued that Fuller was unemployed and desperate for cash at the time of the killing and was known to dislike foreigners because he thought they were taking jobs away from Americans.
Public defender John Chin countered that detectives found no evidence of a robbery – Ahmed still had money in his pocket and his wallet was not taken from the cab – and no evidence that Fuller was inside the cab.
“None of the trace evidence from inside that cab comes back to my client. None of it,” Chin said during his closing argument.
The verdict left Fuller’s mother, Susan Barnett, in tears.
“Just because my son was down on his luck doesn’t mean he’d kill someone,” Barnett said outside court.
Adam Lynn: 253-597-8644
adam.lynn@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/crime
