Translate
News and stories
2024 Notable cases
Officers were asked by paramedics to respond to their location to assist with a young female patient who was found barely clothed on the side of a busy intersection in 40-degree weather. She was making incoherent statements and was unable to identify herself. Officers used their MobileID scanner and were able to determine her identity through fingerprint matches in the King County and WSP AFIS databases. That information was used to get her the resources that she needed.
A Kent man was awoken by the feeling of being struck on the arm with something hard. When he opened his eyes he found an unknown woman stabbing him repeatedly with a knife. Despite serious injuries, the man was able to fend the woman off, flee the residence, and call 911. AFIS responded to the scene to process for fingerprints and recovered several, including prints from a knife on the man’s dresser. The prints were identified to a known suspect in case. She is currently in custody awaiting trial.
A suspect violently attempted to break into a Bellevue home as the homeowner hid in their bathroom and called 911. The suspect fired his gun through the home’s front door, ultimately breaking in through the garage. The suspect stole the victim’s vehicle by driving through the closed garage doors and driving off at a high rate of speed. The suspect fled to Woodinville where he carjacked another vehicle. The suspect was eventually stopped by police and taken into custody. Latent prints recovered in the original vehicle were used to confirm that the arrested subject was the same person that originally stole the vehicle from Bellevue.
Witnesses reported that a man, armed with a knife, forcibly removed an 80-year-old woman from her SUV, hitting her as he fled the scene in her car. Despite life-saving efforts, the victim died at the scene. Police located the stolen vehicle and the victim’s deceased dog at a nearby park, and requested AFIS staff respond to process for fingerprint evidence. A cellphone belonging to the victim was recovered at the scene, and latent prints developed on it were searched through the King County Regional AFIS Database, hitting to a subject that was unknown to investigators at the time. The subject was arrested the following day with the key to the victim’s vehicle still in his pocket.
Officers were dispatched to a call involving the assault of a bus driver. Upon arrival the victim was found to be deceased on the sidewalk. Witnesses stated that a subject pepper sprayed the driver, leading to a physical fight where the victim was stabbed multiple times. AFIS staff responded to the scene to process the bus for fingerprint evidence. Prints were recovered from the interior of a window that the subject had been seen on video trying to close. One impression was identified to a subject determined to be involved in the homicide.
Police were dispatched to a Seattle shooting where they found a victim laying in a parking lot with several gunshot wounds to the upper body. Information obtained from witnesses at the scene indicated that the victim was shot while in the driver’s seat of a vehicle and had then been pushed out into the parking lot. Witnesses placed the shooter in the vehicle’s front passenger seat. The vehicle was recovered 5 days later in Tacoma and returned to Seattle for processing. Three prints were developed on the passenger side visor and identified to a subject in the King County AFIS database.
Additional success stories
A Kent woman was found murdered in her home. An examiner recovered prints from a dresser believed to contain the victim's prescription medication and money. A search of these prints allowed the examiner to provide the detective with a new name for the investigation. The suspect was arrested, confessed to the crime, and provided the names of two other suspects. He was charged with Murder First Degree.
A large-scale fraud investigation conducted along the west coast revealed the use of high-dollar fraudulent checks and false identifications in a home escrow scheme where homes were being sold without the owners’ permission. A check was submitted to the lab to be processed for prints. An identification was made to a subject that matched the video surveillance at the bank where he was seen attempting to cash that same check.
In 1991 a young mother in Seattle was raped at knife point in her own home by a masked individual. Both latent prints and DNA evidence were recovered. The crime was investigated but did not yield a suspect that could be tied to the scene. In 2019, the recovered latent prints were re-analyzed and searched in local, state and national AFIS databases, something that was not possible in 1991. Two latent prints recovered from the scene were identified to two previously unassociated subjects. Given these identifications, a nearly 20-year-old rape case has new leads.
After receiving a tip, Burien deputies made a traffic stop and used a Mobile ID device to determine the subject was lying about his identity. The subject was one of Washington's Most Wanted fugitives and had numerous felony warrants. He was a violent offender wanted by the Department of Corrections in King County after a previous conviction for punching his girlfriend in the face.
This case started with a callout for a carjacking/homicide. Latent Print Examiners processed the vehicle and a gun box that was later determined to be the box of the murder weapon. They recovered the only print identified to the suspect from the support bar in the trunk. An examiner identified prints of both the mother and the son on the gun box and the prints of the son and the alleged shooter on the inside of the trunk.
The mother pleaded guilty after the gun was found and a witness had come forward. The son was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years. In the son’s trial, the actual vehicle was brought into the courtroom and the examiner crawled into the trunk to show just how far in the trunk the alleged shooter’s print was discovered. The alleged shooter pleaded guilty as charged to Murder First Degree with a firearm and was sentenced to 25 years.
An SPD Latent Print Examiner assisted in a burglary investigation at Safeco Field. A person broke into display cases, stealing rare Seattle Mariners memorabilia. The examiner processed items from the scene and identified an individual. In less than 12 hours the memorabilia was recovered and the suspect was arrested, keeping part of Seattle’s sports history from being lost forever.