Teenagers arrested for Tacoma robbery that turned fatal, charging papers say
Prosecutors have charged a 16-year-old and 19-year-old in connection to a robbery Sunday in Tacoma during which two people were shot and killed, court records say.
Their plan, according to charging papers, had been to rob a 13-year-old boy.
Officers were called to the reported shooting Sunday near the 1300 block of East 35th Street and arrived to find 19-year-old Evitan De Biaso and 21-year-old Deonte Mitchner dead.
Tacoma police said Thursday that they’re still looking for the shooter.
Jeremy Phillip Dubois, 19, pleaded not guilty at arraignment Thursday in Pierce County Superior Court to attempted first-degree robbery and conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery.
The 16-year-old suspect pleaded not guilty at arraignment Tuesday to those same charges in juvenile court.
The News Tribune does not generally publish the names of defendants who are charged as juveniles.
Charging papers give this account of what happened:
The 16-year-old met the 13-year-old a few weeks before and smoked marijuana with him.
He told investigators that he, Dubois, Mitchner and De Biaso later made a plan to lure the 13-year-old somewhere and beat him up.
On the day of the robbery attempt, Dubois drove the group to the location and stayed in the car with Mitchner’s 1-year-old and 5-year-old children.
The 13-year-old arrived with a friend, saw the 16-year-old, and the three of them walked down an alley where Mitchner and De Biaso were hiding in bushes.
When Mitchner and De Biaso jumped out and started punching the 13-year-old’s friend, the 13-year-old ran with the 16-year-old following.
The 16-year-old heard gunshots as he ran and, because he knew De Biaso and Mitchner were not armed, believed it was the 13-year-old’s friend who was shooting.
Eventually, the 16-year-old told police he’d offered to sell the 13-year-old a gun for $275 but intended all along to rob the boy. He didn’t really have a gun to sell, he told police.
Both De Biaso’s mother and father contacted The New Tribune about their son following his death.
“He strived to be a good man,” his mother, Clysta Cole, said. “He wanted to learn how to be a provider for his family, and he never wanted to lose his children. He wanted to be there for them.”
She said he has six younger siblings and had been helping raise his girlfriend’s toddler.
“He was a good kid,” she said. “He had a great heart. None of us on this Earth are perfect. He made a few bad choices for himself, but that does not change how good his heart was.”
Cole said De Biaso was from Seattle, had studied at Tyee High School and was a descendent of the Aleut, Sioux and Nez Perce tribes.
“I hope that parents take a really good look at their children, love them where they’re at, teach them the value of their life and other peoples’ lives,” she said.
De Biaso’s father, Michael De Biaso, said his son was funny and had a talent for rapping.
“He was a character,” De Biaso said. “He was always wanting everybody around him to be happy. He wanted everybody to laugh.”
He said they had an on-again-off-again relationship and that he told his son that he needed to change his behavior.
“The demons inside got the best of him,” De Biaso said.
He believed his son had been changing his ways.
“Two to three days before this all took place, he was going around, and anybody he had wronged he was apologizing to,” he said. “He was calling up everybody that he’d done wrong to and was asking for forgiveness.”
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call police at 253-591-5968.
This story was originally published December 13, 2018 at 4:53 PM.
