Suspect sought after driver shot in head
Police are searching for a man suspected of shooting the driver of a minivan he was riding in early Friday and causing the van to crash into a Sodo gas station.
The minivan, carrying five people, crashed into the service station at Fourth Avenue South and South Horton Street at 12:30 a.m. When police arrived, they found the driver shot in the back of the head, said Seattle police spokesman Mark Jamieson.
The suspected shooter, who was riding in the back seat, ran off, and police are trying to locate him, Jamieson said. The driver was taken to Harborview Medical Center.
The front-seat passenger was also treated at Harborview for injuries and released, Jamieson said. The other two passengers were uninjured.
Detectives have an identity of the suspect, according to Jamieson. He would not say whether the man had a criminal history or whether there is a suspected motive for the shooting.
The gas station was closed at the time of the accident, though an employee was doing inventory in the back of the store. That person was uninjured, Jamieson said.
Puget Sound
Speeders nabbed in race for bargains
Washington state troopers made 178 traffic stops over two days on Interstate 5 near Federal Way as shoppers headed to find bargains at local shopping malls.
In one hour Friday morning along a section of I-5 in Snohomish County that was patrolled by aircraft, troopers pulled over 20 vehicles for speeding.
State Patrol spokesman Jeff Merrill said that in four hours Thursday morning, troopers made 118 stops, one of which involved a car going more than 110 mph. Between 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. Friday, troopers made 60 more stops near the 317th Street overpass near Federal Way.
The State Patrol will have two single-engine prop planes equipped with cameras to monitor traffic outside Department of Transportation camera range this morning.
One aircraft will fly over Pierce and Thurston counties near the Tacoma Mall and Hawks Prairie shopping areas and the other over Snohomish County near Everett and the retail corridor near Marysville, Tulalip and Arlington.
Snohomish County
2 arrested, may be linked to body
Police have arrested two men in connection with the duct-taped body found on the side of Interstate 5 this week.
Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies arrested two men, one in his 50s, the other in his 60s, at a home north of Lynnwood on Wednesday.
It’s not clear how the men are connected to the body, which was found duct-taped and in a sleeping bag Wednesday, but Mountlake Terrace police said in a news release that they located several pounds of heroin as well as cocaine, marijuana and a large quantity of cash inside the house.
The men were booked into the Snohomish County Jail pending drug charges. Their involvement in the death is under investigation, according to Mountlake Terrace police.
The identity of the person found next to I-5 has not been released.
Vancouver
Ex-soldier won’t fight extradition
A former U.S. Army Ranger accused of bank robbery in Tacoma has agreed not to fight extradition from British Columbia.
In B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver on Thursday, 21-year-old Luke Sommer said he’s not disputing his return to the United States.
Sommer holds dual U.S.-Canada citizenship. He was arrested in British Columbia and accused of being one of the men who robbed a Bank of America Tacoma branch of $54,000 in August 2006.
Sommer had been out on bail and living in Westbank, B.C., until last June when he disappeared. Police caught up with him a few weeks later in Richmond, B.C.
Seattle Times staff and news services