Crime stats: At 36 homicides, Pierce County on track for a record year of violence
Thirty-six people have died by homicide in 2022 in Pierce County. The killings are more than double what they were at this time last year, keeping with a national trend of increased homicides since 2020.
Of those 36 homicides, 17 occurred in Tacoma, and six were fatal police shootings. At this time last year, there had been 17 homicides in all of Pierce County, with nine in Tacoma.
The rate of killings has shown few signs of slowing. On Tuesday, the county was on its longest streak of days without a homicide: 14. A review of the homicides in Tacoma shows that nearly all have occurred in neighborhoods south of Interstate 5 and state Route 16. And among cases that have been solved in the county, the most common reason for the homicide is domestic violence.
Other violent crimes, including assault, robbery, sexual assault and arson are also seeing an uptick, according to data from Tacoma Police Department and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.
Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has seen a surge of homicides. Speaking to the News Tribune’s Matt Driscoll last month, University of Miami criminology professor Alex Piquero said it’s difficult to pinpoint the cause of the increase in violent crimes, but that factors such as rises in gun and alcohol sales, increases in opioid disorders, the COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest and unemployment all factor in.
2020 was a concerning year for homicides in Tacoma with 32 dead, the most the city had seen since 1994. Last year’s killings tied that number.
Although it’s early in the year to know how the crime rate will shape up, the city is on track to record its highest homicide total since 1994, when Tacoma had 33 homicides.
Nearly all of the homicides in the county were shootings (33). In others, a person was deliberately run over at a Spanaway drive-thru restaurant and a 2-year-old child died by abuse from her parents. The Pierce County medical examiner has not ruled on the cause of death in one case.
Fourteen of the 36 homicides are unsolved. TPD has solved about 53 percent of its 15 homicides, not including police shootings. The Sheriff’s Department has solved 54 percent of its 11 cases. The solve rates are above the national average. According to the Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom that covers the U.S. criminal justice system, the national homicide-clearance rate in 2020 was a little below 50 percent.
In other types of crimes, data from Tacoma police shows the sharpest increases in incidents of robbery, arson, kidnapping and motor vehicle theft during the same time period in 2022 and 2021.
The only offenses that were down over last year were incidents of forgery, fraud, drug violations, obscene material offenses, prostitution and violations of weapons laws.
Tacoma Police Department is taking steps to try to address the rises in violent crime. In a presentation to city council last week, Chief Avery Moore went over his plan, which includes making police officers more visible and focusing resources on high crime areas of the city.
The strategy also includes contracting with two criminologists at the University of Texas-San Antonio to help develop and evaluate the crime reduction plan.
Further phases are still being developed, but Moore said they will be based on engaging with local and state partnerships as well as the use of “focused deterrence,” a crime strategy first used in Boston in the late 1990s to address youth-gang gun violence. It aims to change specific criminal behavior committed by a small number of repeat offenders.
Where are homicides happening?
In Tacoma, mapping where homicides have occurred shows a definitive split between neighborhoods north of Interstate 5 and state Route 16 and those south of it. All but three of the homicides were reported south of those major roadways.
The neighborhood that has seen the most homicides (7) is the city’s South End, located east of Interstate 5 and bordered by Pacific Avenue.
Four of those killings occurred along a third-of-a-mile stretch of South Hosmer Street that has been scrutinized as a hot spot of crime. Tacoma police have been able to solve all but one of those homicides, the April 12 fatal shooting of Astina Messieur.
The neighborhood with the second-most homicides is the city’s Eastside (4). Homicides have also been reported in South Tacoma (3), Hilltop (1) and the downtown corridor (2).
What motives are behind the killings?
Investigators are looking into motives for most of the homicides that have occurred this year, but among the cases that have been solved, the most common reason is domestic violence.
Across Washington state, domestic violence is a common motive for homicides. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, of the 302 homicides in Washington in 2020, 20 percent were domestic-violence killings. Of all the crimes against persons reported that year, nearly 50 percent were domestic-violence offenses.
In Pierce County in 2021, about 17 percent (11) of the 65 homicides were domestic-violence incidents. So far this year, five people in the county have been victims of domestic-violence killings.
The most recent was the March 11 death of 2-year-old Sarai Brooks. She died of blunt force trauma to the head, and medical examiners found bruises all over her body. Both of the toddler’s parents were charged with murder.
Earlier domestic-violence homicides include Gloria Choi, who was fatally shot Jan. 2 in Lakewood, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend, from whom she’d repeatedly sought protection. On Jan. 9, a Carbonado man killed his girlfriend and then shot himself after a police pursuit. In February, 73-year-old Nora Schindler was shot and killed in Graham by her roommate, who then killed himself. On Feb. 28, a woman was fatally shot, allegedly by her husband, who called her death “an accident.”
For other cases that have been solved, motives include one road-rage incident, two homicides suspected to be drug related, one mistaken identity killing, a fight during an armed robbery that turned deadly and a fatal shooting stemming from an altercation outside of a bar.
2022 Homicide list
Jan. 1: Sorin Lay
Jan. 2: Gloria Choi
Jan. 6: Jeremy Tomlinson
Jan. 9: Zoe Lacrosse
Jan. 16: Moses Portillo
Jan. 17: Earl J. Harris III
Jan. 20: Nora Schindler
Jan. 22: Gage D. Hallstead
Jan. 25: Demonte Nettles Williams
Jan. 27: Jerome Holman
Jan. 28: Terrance Flowers
Jan. 28: Brett Stagg
Jan. 31: Victor Scott
Feb. 5: Philip Mercado Mendoza
Feb. 7: Joshua Ferrell
Feb. 10: Esteban Vasquez III
Feb. 11: Joseph Sanchez
Feb. 19: Kavonte Crowley
Feb. 24: Steven Wohlwend
Feb. 26: James Brown
Feb. 28: Heather Cooper
March 6: Danny Stanley
March 11: Sarai Brooks
March 13: Alin Valencia-Miranda
March 14: Michael Jones
March 16: Michael Mercado
March 16: Steven Elmendorf
March 16: Jeremy Dayton
March 16: Dominique Calata
March 19: Marquise Slack
March 19: Jordan Brown
March 29: Victim not publicly identified
April 8: Brian Roberts Jr.
April 11: Annabelle Hichens
April 12: Astina Messieur
April 12: Raymond Plattner
This story was originally published April 28, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
