A Tacoma woman called police for help. What if her killer was jailed sooner?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- A Tacoma woman was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend in 2021.
- Her father alleged that Tacoma police failed to protect her in the days before her death.
- A lawsuit against TPD was dismissed by the court, but the plaintiff plans to appeal.
After a Tacoma woman’s ex-boyfriend was sentenced to life in prison for her brutal murder, the victim’s father sought accountability from police who he alleged had mishandled his daughter’s prior calls for help.
Gilbert Valente sued the Tacoma Police Department for wrongful death on behalf of his slain 44-year-old daughter, Gaylee Valente-Curcio, in December 2024. The lawsuit alleged officers failed to enforce a domestic-violence protective order that Valente-Curcio had obtained against her ex-boyfriend shortly before she was killed.
Tacoma city attorneys pushed back on the claims that police inaction allowed Valente’s daughter to die, as they sought to dismiss the lawsuit. A judge recently ruled in the city’s favor.
The lawsuit was thrown out in January by Pierce County Superior Court Judge Grant Blinn, who earlier this month also declined the plaintiff’s request to reconsider his decision, according to court records. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again.
Attorney Samuel Daheim, who’s representing the victim’s father, told The News Tribune on Friday that they plan to appeal the dismissal.
“It likely goes without saying that we are unhappy with the decision and, respectfully, feel that it is entirely inconsistent with the spirit, purpose, and the letter of the law of Washington state which is intended to protect victims of domestic violence who seek protection from law enforcement and the courts,” Daheim wrote in an email.
The News Tribune’s efforts to reach a spokesperson for the Tacoma Police Department for comment Friday were unsuccessful.
Valente-Curcio was stabbed more than 40 times by Tony Rico Sanders in November 2021, according to prosecutors and court records. Sanders tracked her to a new residence in the 3100 block of South 9th Street, hid and attacked her outside the home. She died eight days later, The News Tribune previously reported.
Three weeks before the deadly attack, Sanders was arrested for fourth-degree assault in another domestic-violence incident. Valente-Curcio was allegedly repeatedly pushed to the ground by Sanders, choked and dragged by her hair, according to court records. Her face was swollen in several areas when she and officers spoke, court records show. She obtained a court order that prohibited Sanders from contacting or coming within 1,000 feet of her.
The lawsuit’s allegations
The lawsuit called into question how police officers responded to two separate reports from Valente-Curcio in the days before her death that alleged Sanders had violated the terms of the court order after he bailed out of jail.
In one call, a little more than a week before she was killed, Valente-Curcio reported Sanders had been staying at a home they previously shared, where he legally wasn’t allowed, and was making threatening statements in calls or texts, court records show. In a second call two days prior to her death, she told police her vehicle’s windows were broken out and that she saw Sanders at a new unit she was renting shortly after that unit’s electrical lines were cut, according to the lawsuit.
The suit alleged that officers made no efforts to contact or arrest Sanders despite the reported domestic-violence protection order violations, and Daheim said Valente-Curcio warned officers explicitly that Sanders was going to kill her.
The city’s response
In response to the claims, city attorneys wrote in a court filing that TPD officers had been unable to establish probable cause for Sanders’ arrest in either of the two reports that had accused him of violating the court order.
Valente-Curcio, who believed the threatening messages were from Sanders but didn’t recognize the number, didn’t provide the messages for police to investigate, nor did she offer the name of a witness who reported seeing Sanders at their former home, according to the filing. After her power was cut at her new rental unit during the morning, she told police several hours later that she had possibly seen someone with the same build as her ex-boyfriend through a window, but there were no video cameras in the area and no witnesses, the filing said.
Had police arrested Sanders after either call, neither city nor Pierce County prosecutors would have filed criminal charges, and Sanders would have been released from custody, according to the filing. Also, it was speculative to presume that police would have found Sanders to arrest him or, even if there had been probable cause, that he would have still been in custody on the day he killed Valente-Curcio, the filing said.
City attorneys argued other legal defenses, including that Washington state didn’t recognize claims of negligent police investigation; Valente-Curcio was not entrusted in the city’s care; and Sanders was not under city supervision. There’s no duty to protect others from criminal acts of a third party unless, in part, a defendant creates a “new risk” to the plaintiff, they said.
“To the extent Sanders presented a danger to Valente-Curcio, that danger was not created or heightened by the actions of any TPD officer,” the filing said.
Those legal defenses were outlined in the city’s successful court motion in December to dismiss the case.
On Friday, Daheim accused Tacoma police of wrongly “hiding behind the flimsy excuse that they were just on the outskirts of probable cause.”
“Gaylee did everything she was supposed to do under the law. She got a civil protection order in place from a judge, took steps to remove herself from danger, and called law enforcement when there was information to report that Sanders was violating the protection orders,” he said via email. “Whether due to laziness or incompetence, Tacoma PD did nothing to protect Gaylee.”
