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A 16-year-old Washington boy who mysteriously vanished for more than a day has now been charged, along with a friend, with the murder of his mother’s former boyfriend.
An extensive search for Gabriel Davies was launched Wednesday, Aug. 31, after he failed to show up for football practice at Olympia High School, where he was to start his junior year this week. His pickup truck was found 12 miles to the south, in a wooded area near the community of Tenino; it had what appeared to be blood inside, and the boy’s phone was smashed nearby.
Late Thursday night, Davies was “located safe” in the area where the truck was found, the Thurston County sheriff’s office said, adding there would be no “additional comments regarding this incident.”
Two days later, the sheriff’s office in neighboring Pierce County revealed a twist to the story:
On Thursday morning, deputies doing a welfare check on a 51-year-old man who had missed work for four days found him dead in his home in Orting. He had been shot and stabbed.
Investigators learned that the man — identified in court records only as D.M. — had dated Gabriel Davies’ mother.
The sheriff’s announcement said: “Friday night our detectives had enough evidence for probable cause to arrest two suspects in this case. Just after 8 p.m. both of our suspects, two 16-year-old males, were taken into custody.”
The second suspect was identified as Justin Yoon, a friend of Davies’.
Investigators said D.M. is thought to have been killed on Aug. 28, a Sunday. On that weekend, according to a prosecutor’s affidavit filed Tuesday, Davies and Yoon were camping with a group at Panther Lake, a 65-mile drive from Orting. Their companions said the boys left the cabin at 12:01 a.m. on that Sunday and returned at 6:30 a.m.
According to Pierce County sheriff’s detectives, surveillance video from D.M.’s home shows two “skinny young males” in the backyard at 1:59 that morning. They are seen entering the home through the doggy door.
At 2:47 a.m., the victim’s German shepherd bolts out of the doggy door and a minute later the two people exit through a side door. For five minutes, they go between the home and the detached garage, and then leave at 2:52 a.m.
Seattle TV station KIRO reported that both suspects’ fathers called the Thurston County sheriff’s detectives to say that Davies was “involved” with the death.
The account given by Davies’ father said his son had been threatened by D.M.’s “biker buddies” who wanted the boy to steal something from the garage of the Orting home, about an hour’s drive from Olympia. The father gave a timeline in which the killing occurred not on Aug. 28 but on Aug. 31, the day the teen went missing.
He said Davies and Yoon went to the home together that day and entered through the doggy door — and when the victim came home, Yoon stabbed him. Davies did not witness the shooting, but heard two shots, the father said.
Davies left without taking anything from the home and began to drive back to Olympia, taking a less direct route, according to the father’s account. When he was near Tenino, the “bikers” caught up with him, pulled him from the truck and “roughed him up” before taking his shoes and leaving him in a wooded area.
The charging affidavit says Thurston County sheriff’s detectives noted that when Davies was found, he had no injuries indicating he had been walking barefoot through the woods for hours, as he claimed. “Davies initially told a detective that he could not remember what had happened to him, or where he had been during his disappearance,” the affidavit says. “He later said he could not say what had happened to him because people were going to hurt him.”
During the search for Davies, the sheriff’s office said he had been seen walking by himself near the abandoned pickup truck around 5:30 p.m. the day he went missing.
He admitted smashing his own phone because he was afraid of what police would find on it, investigators said.
Davies and Yoon were charged Tuesday with second-degree murder, first-degree burglary and unlawful possession of a firearm. They were ordered held on $1 million bail each and will be tried as adults.
KIRO reported that GoFundMe deactivated an account set up to raise money for Davies’ defense, saying it violated unspecified terms of service. When it was taken down on Sunday, two days after Davies’ arrest, it had raised about $21,000.
Originally published at Bay Area News Group