Two teenagers and a 29-year-old man have been accused of driving to a Tacoma apartment complex last week to gun down and kill a 16-year-old high school student.
One of the teenagers, Vincent Lee Bradley III, was arrested Wednesday afternoon, according to Pierce County Jail records. The other suspects have yet to be apprehended. Charging documents filed in Pierce County Superior Court indicate the older suspect fled to Portland.
Bradley, Devonte J. Pool and Isiah D. Martin were charged Tuesday with first-degree murder, and a bench warrant was issued for their arrest. Mister Truth is naming the teenagers because, according to the prosecuting attorney’s office, defendants who are at least 16 and have been charged with a serious violent offense such as first-degree murder are automatically prosecuted as adults.
Bradley is expected to be arraigned Thursday afternoon.
The three defendants are accused in the March 29 homicide of Larry “Trae” Marshall III, a Foss High School student. According to charging documents, Bradley, 16; Pool, 17 and Martin, 29, waited in a red Dodge Charger that afternoon in the parking lot of a West End apartment complex where Marshall was going to meet a friend. Records state Bradley and Pool got out of the car when Marshall walked into the parking lot, and the two fired at least 33 shots at the young man.
One bullet struck Marshall in the neck, according to court records, and two more hit him in the back. Tacoma Police Department officers found the victim unresponsive in a grassy area about 200 feet away from where the suspects allegedly parked to wait for him. Tacoma Fire Department personnel declared him dead at the scene.
Marshall was the fifth person under 18 to die by homicide in Tacoma so far this year, part of a surge in youth crime and violence felt nationally and locally. Another 16-year-old was killed in a shooting Wednesday evening in Parkland.
Investigators have not identified a motive in the shooting, according to charging documents, and it’s unclear how Marshall may have known the three who were allegedly targeting him. Prosecutors wrote in the documents that all three suspects are known to be tied to gangs, but it’s not known if the motive for the killing was gang related.
Detectives used surveillance video, Department of Licensing records and phone records to tie the three defendants to the shooting. Records state that Martin rented the Dodge Charger used to take him and the others to the shooting from an Enterprise Rent-A-Car location on South Tacoma Way.
The Dodge Charger was found the day after the shooting at Martin’s last known address at a South Pine Street apartment complex. According to the declaration for determination of probable cause, surveillance video showed the car return there about 20 minutes after the homicide, and Tacoma and Lakewood police detectives recognized the teenagers who got out of the car as Pool and Bradley.