Fatal shooting in Tacoma might have stemmed from drug deal gone wrong, charges say
A March shooting in Tacoma’s South End neighborhood that left a 42-year-old man dead might have stemmed from a drug deal gone wrong, according to court records.
Quante Reynolds, 27, was charged Wednesday in Pierce County Superior Court with first-degree murder, second-degree murder and two counts of first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm.
The defendant pleaded not guilty at arraignment, and pro-tem Court Commissioner Meagan Foley set bail at $1 million.
Reynolds is accused of fatally shooting Marcus Patton the night of March 29 from a vehicle near South 48th Street and Sheridan Avenue. A person who was with the victim during the shooting drove him to St. Joseph’s Medical Center. According to court records, Patton was shot multiple times in the lower abdomen and groin.
The victim was pronounced dead from his injuries on April 15, and Tacoma Police Department announced its shooting investigation had become a homicide investigation.
Reynolds has a prior felony conviction in Pierce County from 2012 for first-degree attempted assault. According to court records, he was accused of shooting at a group of three men in a car after allegedly telling them he didn’t like the way they were looking at him. One victim was grazed in the head by a bullet but survived.
According to charging documents, Reynolds had known the victim since the defendant was a child. People close to the victim believed Patton was meeting Reynolds to buy or sell drugs, possibly oxycodone pills, their counterfeit fentanyl alternative or marijuana.
Detectives identified Reynolds as a suspect through witness statements, surveillance video, a “citizen informant” who said Reynolds was the shooter and phone records that place the defendant within a half-mile of where the shooting occurred minutes before it happened.
Reynolds agreed to be interviewed after he was arrested Tuesday, telling investigators that he communicated with Patton that day but never met up with him. He denied shooting him and said he was driving a different vehicle than the one seen on surveillance video.
Charging documents describe shooting
Tacoma police responded to the shooting scene at 9:07 p.m. after dispatchers received multiple reports of shots fired in that area. Nearby residents flagged down officers and pointed out the area where the shooting occurred, telling officers that the vehicles involved had left.
Police found a pool of blood in the grass between two houses’ driveways and a cell phone that appeared to have been pierced by a bullet.
One witness told officers he heard 10 loud “pops” coming from outside his home that he thought were gunshots. Out his front window, the man saw a white BMW sedan. He went outside to see if he could help and saw two men in the front seats of the car. One had multiple gunshots to his torso, and the witness gave them directions to the nearest fire station. The car drove off.
Two days after the shooting, a detective was contacted by a “known citizen informant” familiar with the shooting, according to the declaration for determination of probable cause. The informant said the suspect in the shooting was Reynolds, and that the man had been texting the victim to arrange a meeting.
According to the informant, Reynolds “was offering a deal on ‘blues,’” slang for oxycodone pills or a counterfeit fentanyl alternative, prosecutors wrote in the probable cause document. The informant said the men decided to meet at South 48th Street and Sheridan Avenue.
A fatal shooting in the South End
On April 8, detectives interviewed the person who drove the victim to the hospital, a juvenile male. He was with Patton that day and went with him to a Safeway in Eastside Tacoma. The juvenile stayed in the car and saw that someone with the name Quante kept calling Patton’s phone.
Patton talked with the person calling him while driving to a convenience store. The juvenile told investigators that the men’s conversation did not sound tense. Asked why the two were meeting up, he said it was to “look at some weed” that “Quante” had for Patton to look at, prosecutors wrote.
At the 4800 block of South Sheridan, the boy told detectives that Patton went to talk to “the people” in the other vehicle. He said he heard gunshots and ducked down, then saw Patton running back to their vehicle. The other car, described as a dark gray SUV with tinted windows, drove off.
Detectives also interviewed the mother of the victim’s child, who said she believed Patton was meeting “Quante” to either buy or sell pills for a cheaper amount, according to the probable cause document.
She said the men were not on good terms, telling detectives that Patton had recently tried to mediate a dispute between “Quante” and an ex-boyfriend of the man’s current girlfriend.
