HOQUIAM, Wash. — For two years the family of Armando Reyes has waited for justice.
They will have to keep waiting.
In February 2022 the 26-year-old father of two was killed in a stabbing.
Last month state investigators dismissed the charge against Reyes’s accused killer, Michael Anthony Trujillo. Prosecutors said charges could be refiled, but the decision upset Reyes's girlfriend, Alexis Chibers.
”It makes me angry," Chilbers said. "I’m like, sick from it. They could do better. This man is an evil man, and he can re-offend and will re-offend. He has done it before."
Trujillo served more than three years in prison for attacking his brother and mother with a knife in Pierce County in 2016.
Last month the Washington Attorney General’s Office said state doctors found Trujillo was not competent to stand trial for the 2022 murder.
He could be civilly committed at a state hospital to receive treatment, or he could be released.
Hoquiam Police Chief Joe Strong fears if Trujillo is released, he will hurt someone else.
”This was not a ‘who-dunnit,’” Strong said. ”My concern is he will eventually be released and another community another family will experience the devastating loss that we had.”
The Grays Harbor County prosecutor assigned to the case, Steve Jackson, said the county is taking steps to prevent Trujillo's potential release.
”We’re proactively filing, re-filing the case, and we’re going to put it to a warrant so when he’s released from the state hospital system if he is anytime in the future, the warrant and Hoquiam PD will be there to pick him up to bring him back here to start it all again,” Jackson said.
Jackson said a court hearing is scheduled for Trujillo on Thursday.
Citing privacy concerns, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office could not comment on what may happen with Trujillo’s case.
Chibers said the couple’s oldest daughter, Neveah, now four years old, still asks about her father.
"There's not really a day where she doesn't talk or ask about her Dad,” Chibers said. "She likes to do this thing where we blow up balloons, and she writes on them, and send them up to heaven for her Daddy."