Yesterday brought three arrests in the murder of Dien Kien Huynh. Three teenagers have been charged with his murder. The suspects include a teenager whose cousin was the first victim of the Beltway Sniper. The suspects’ families all say their children could never commit a crime like this, but the prosecutors say they have confessions from all three of them.
The news says these kids were apparently honor students, but whatever smarts they had in the classroom must have stayed there, because nothing about this crime was smart. They started with a robbery on the waterfront and then went up the hill past the Proctor district and attacked an old man with a hammer. And then they were caught and confessed. Every action in this chain of events reeks of stupidity. And yes, I realize that people are innocent until proven guilty but I for one can’t imagine why three kids would all confess to a murder for the hell of it. Not to mention the fact that police found a hat stolen in the first robbery hanging in one of the suspects rooms.
All three suspects are memebers of the Mt. Tahoma football team and two of them have now useless scholarships. These were good students from a poor side of town with about the worst kind of judgment you can have. With any luck at all they’ll all be tried as adults and spend the next few years realizing how much fun prison isn’t.
While these kids confessing to murder, a police cruiser responded to a call from a burglar alarm on South 72nd Street near Wapato Park. On a ride along I went on, the cop we responded to a burglar alarm. I said to the cop, “Let me guess 9 times out of 10. It’s a false alarm.”
He laughed and said, “More like 999 out of 1000.” So when they found the front door of the house open at just past one in the morning I’m sure the responding officers were surprised.
Upon entering the house they found the body of a man in his 50’s. He’d been shot multiple times. At the time of this writing, they believe this man was specifically targeted and that lacking any evidence of a break in, he may have knew his attacker.
I have friends who don’t understand why I love this city. They say that it’s full of crime and that there’s nothing good about it. These are people who haven’t been to Point Defiance and thrown rocks in the water at Owen’s Beach lately, or had breakfast on the weekend at the Parkway Tavern or had lunch at Gateway To India or had a cocktail and the gigantic vat of steamed clams during happy hour at C.I. Shenanigan’s on the waterfront. We have the best view of Mt. Ranier in the state, reasonable housing costs, a beautiful waterfront, and better museums than Seattle.
Cities like Detroit and Washington DC have a murder practically every other day. It’d be impossible for me to do a website like this detailing the homicides of the year. And they don’t have one park that comes close to Point Defiance.
Now having said that, if you don’t live here and you’re thinking about moving here, I’d like to say that this place is full of crime and it rains every day. I don’t even remember what the sun looks like. I have to go now. A bunch of gangsters just broke in and want to steal my computer. Honest.
-Jack
tacomastories.com 