Fall City by Lake Alice shooting: Washington state teen, 15, shoots dead parents, 3 siblings, while sister escapes in gun massacre that leaves neighbors stunned as no known motive is known. All siblings were home-schooled.
A Washington state community has been left dumbfounded after a 15 year old teen boy from the well to do enclave of ‘Fall City’ gunned down his parents and three siblings, while another managed to survive the bloody mayhem.
Two adults and three young teens were found shot dead on Monday morning inside their multi-million home in Fall City by Lake Alice, about 30 miles east of Seattle, which has some of the most expensive homes in America.
A 15-year-old boy was taken into custody after allegedly murdering five of the family’s seven members.
Fall City victims id as software engineer dad & wife & 3 teen siblings
Police have not revealed the names or ages of the victims- or their relationship to one another.
A neighbor told KING-TV that a couple and their five children lived in the home.
‘I’m just in total shock, I keep bursting into tears,’ Lynne Trowern, told the news outlet.
Neighbors said the teen killed his parents and siblings, except one sister who managed to escape the massacre. The gunned down siblings were described as being ‘young teenagers’.
The teen girl was reportedly shot twice and taken to the hospital after receiving medical help from a neighbor. She is in ‘satisfactory’ condition, officials said according to KCRA.
Several people in Fall City called 911 at about 5am to report the shooting, King County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Mike Mellis said at a media briefing on Monday afternoon.
Arriving deputies immediately took one teenager into custody while another teen who had been hurt was taken to a Seattle hospital, Mellis said. Both teens lived at the house, he said.
Deputies entering the home then discovered the bodies of five people, Mellis said. Two were adults, and three were described by Mellis as young teenagers.
‘Once bodies were discovered, clearly we understand that this is a hugely significant crime scene,’ he said.
Mellis said there was no ongoing threat to the community.
‘I have no reason to think that there will be any additional arrests,’ he said.
Mellis said the situation was ‘clearly a domestic violence incident that involves not only a young man who’s now in significant trouble, it involves firearms.
Mellis added that there was ‘no significant confrontation with the young man that was taken into custody.’
‘What had happened had happened, it was done.’
Mellis said there was no known history of prior police activity at the residence where the shooting occurred.
The teen suspect will face first or second-degree murder charges, King 5 reported, citing officials.
The teen in custody was booked into King county’s juvenile detention facility, according to Mellis. The teen will appear in court for a first hearing on Tuesday or Wednesday, a spokesperson for the county prosecutor’s office. It remained unclear if prosecutors would seek to try the teen as an adult.
Shocked neighbors told Fox13 the kids were homeschooled and well-known in the neighborhood, as they were often seen playing and swimming by their lakeside home.
Offered neighbor, Cameron Doerrer, ‘the parents probably thought that they were doing the right thing by homeschooling their children, protecting them from sort of these bad things that happen to the world. And here it happens right from within. I don’t know what to think.’
Detectives arrived at the ‘tragic scene’ at about 5am after receiving multiple 911 calls reporting a shooting in the Lake Alice neighborhood.
The initial call was about a suicide attempt and possible gunfire inside a home, according to KOMO News.
The young girl who survived the shooting reportedly called 911 from inside a bathroom.
‘It’s very early stages of this investigation, but it’s going to affect many people,’ Mellis added.
‘I can say that it’s going to be really a tragic event for the community, for anybody who has any connection out here.’
Fall City is ranked 29 out of 273 cities in the US for cost of living, which is 120 percent the national average – with a median home listing price of $1.5 million. Median income in the community is $120K plus.
The ‘well to do’ enclave sits 25 miles east of Seattle and is part of the Snoqualmie Ridge mountain range.
Mellis said Fall City, with a population of about 2,000, is a ‘pretty nice area, low crime rate in general.’
‘This is a place where people come to raise their families,’ he added.
The slayings in Fall City, Washington, were the 25th mass murder in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The site defines a mass murder as one in which four or more victims are killed.
The killings in Fall City seem to broadly fit the definition of a type of crime known since the 1980s as family annihilations. Those cases often involve a person with a gun who murders multiple close family members.
A 2023 Indianapolis Star investigation found they had been occurring across the US – on average – once every five days.