Police arrest three teens suspected in fatal shooting of 22-year-old woman in Puyallup
Police arrested three teenagers Tuesday morning in connection to the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old Kingston woman in Puyallup earlier this year.
Gianna Stone died Feb. 25. Police said at the time she was a passenger in a black SUV in the 1500 block of 10th Avenue Northwest and that someone fired shots into the vehicle following a confrontation, The News Tribune reported.
“While it was initially believed that the incident involved a confrontation between the suspects and victims, detectives determined that this incident was random and began as an attempted robbery,” the Puyallup Police Department said in a news release Tuesday.
They arrested three males — an 18-year-old from Puyallup and an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old from Federal Way — on suspicion of second-degree murder. Pierce County Metro Cities SWAT and Valley SWAT served one search warrant in Puyallup on Tuesday morning and another in Federal Way.
Officers served the Puyallup warrant about 6 a.m. in the 700 block of Eighth Avenue Place Northwest, Capt. Kevin Gill, the Puyallup Police Department’s public information officer, told The News Tribune. They used a diversionary device that makes a big flash and a lot of noise, he said, and sounds something like an M-80 explosive.
“Information that led detectives to look at the three suspects stemmed from a patrol officer recognizing a vehicle at the scene of a serious injury collision that occurred after the homicide,” the news release said.
“The driver in this incident fled from a traffic stop and crashed near the Washington State Fair. At the scene of the collision, an officer alerted detectives to the potential link between the vehicle and the homicide as the vehicle matched the suspect vehicle description from the homicide.”
Gill confirmed that the wreck near the fairgrounds happened March 1.
He said detectives asked officers to be on the lookout for a specific vehicle in connection to the homicide investigation, and an officer who responded to the fairgrounds wreck told them he thought the vehicle in the crash looked similar.
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This story was originally published June 4, 2024 at 4:41 PM.
