One month after a shooting at the University of Washington injured one man, police haven’t made any arrests and are still searching for video of the shooting.
The man was shot in UW’s Red Square during heated protests. Opposing sides came together outside an event featuring Milo Yiannopoulous, who resigned from Breitbart News today.
Although a couple has turned themselves in for the shooting claiming self-defense, there have still been no arrests.
It was January 20th. Inauguration Day. UW Police estimated up to a thousand people in Red Square.
“Quite frankly, it was a much larger event than anyone had estimated or anticipated,” said Major Steve Rittereiser, of UW Police.
Video from UW student Kevin Teeter captured a “bang” -- a muffled pop -- and soon a man is on the ground with a gunshot wound.
Two hours later a couple turned themselves into police.
According to search warrant documents, the victim is 34-year-old Joshua Dukes. The couple is Marc Hokoana and his wife Elizabeth, both 29. They said they were there “to report a ‘self-defense’ shooting."
All have hired attorneys. The Hokoanas have not given a statement. Police say Dukes has met with police twice to answer questions since the shooting.
“They have the right not to tell me what they know,” said Rittereiser. “But you would characterize them still, and I did, as being cooperative. Not necessarily forthcoming, but again you have certain protections.”
About two hours before the shooting that night, a KING 5 photographer captured images of Marc Hokoana.
In our footage, it shows him after a scuffle. Police officers were helping him off the ground. His hat was knocked off his head, and his shoe pulled off his foot.
Hokoana attracted our photographer's attention because he seemed to be constantly in the fray of the protest.
At times, he could be heard searching for that missing hat.
“Have you seen my hat?” he said in the video.
UW investigators watched our video, and they say they've spent hours watching other footage from that night, including of the shooting itself. They've even brought in a specialist to help enhance portions important to the case.
Piecing the puzzle together has proven difficult.
“Let's just say [it’s] a little like a football game,” said Rittereiser. “Where they're doing a review of a call. You sometimes look at that and you see two or three different angles and you say, I think I know what happened here, and they're going to reverse this call. But then you see another angle and it's totally different.”
As detectives wait for test results on a gun found in Hokoana's car, search warrant documents show that a phone found in the car "had gone through a factory reset of some sort prior to it being examined."
Rittereiser explains why a phone could provide valuable information.
“We tend to take a lot of photos, we tend to text message what we're doing at the time. In some cases if you have your location services on, it'll tell us where you are at,” he said.
Hokoana's attorney Kimberly Gordon told us he's cooperating with police. And like detectives, she is hoping others come forward with video that could help shed light on the case.
An attorney for Dukes did not return a call for comment.
Rittereiser said it is illegal to bring a gun on campus in Washington state. For a college campus, a violation could mean being trespassed from campus. If the offender is a student, it could result in expulsion.
Norm Arkans of the Office of Media Relations for UW said federal privacy laws restrict him from discussing Hokoana’s status with the school.
