After two weeks of searching for three people involved in a vicious attack on an elderly woman in her Seattle home, robbery detectives are sharing more of what they know about the case in hopes it will shake loose another lead.
"A chance of opportunity that they were at the wrong place at the wrong time," is how detective Mike Magan described the robbery.
An elderly couple on Renton Avenue S. just arrived home from the store on March 6. They were unloading groceries from their car when police say two suspects walked up and asked for directions.
The suspects left. The couple's grandson was helping bring groceries inside when he heard his grandmother scream and a gunshot.
"He ran out into the kitchen and saw his grandmother on the kitchen floor and was being pistol whipped to the head by the suspects. And they were same two suspects that had been at the trunk of the car and had struck up a conversation with him," said Magan.
The two teenage suspects ran off with the woman's purse with $60 inside.
A neighbor's surveillance camera captured a grainy photo of a red Kia Spectra.
Detective Magan checked with the department's Real Time Crime Center, and they had a witness report a similar car involved in a "shots fired" incident earlier that day. That witness snapped photos of the same red Kia with hood damage.
"He happened to be reading a book and looking out his window and saw the car there," said Magan.
A few days later, a patrol officer found the Kia parked in a parking lot on the 9400 block of Rainier Avenue South. Another surveillance camera captured footage of the suspects climbing into a late model, silver Toyota Corolla Hybrid.
One suspect is described as a light-skinned black male in his late teens, 6 feet tall, wearing a white jacket and white pants and armed with a black handgun. A second suspect is described as a light-skinned black teen, 5 feet 6 inches tall, skinny, wearing a blue jacket and dark pants. He had a mustache at the time of the attack.
Seattle police believe a third suspect was driving the getaway car.
Magan said three generations of the family live in the victims' home, and the attack has shaken all of them.
"The victim, she's 73 years old," said Magan. "What I was told at Harborview she was within an inch of losing her life. She was inside her home when she was accosted. They really felt violated."
Anyone with information in the case is asked to contact Detective Magan at (206) 684-5540.
