Washington high school football player staged disappearance to avoid murder charges, prosecutors say
Gabriel Davies ordered by biker gang to steal item from victim’s home, father told police
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A high school football player allegedly staged his own disappearance so he could evade charges for murdering a 51-year-old man who had previously been in a relationship with his mother.
Prosecutors say that a frantic search was launched for Gabriel Davies, a 16-year-old from Washington state, when he failed to show up to practice last week.
Officials said at the time that the Olympia High School student’s blood-spattered car was found abandoned with his broken phone on the floor nearby.
Law enforcement announced the following day that he had been found safe, only for him to then be immediately arrested.
The teenager, along with Justin Jiwoon Yoon, also 16, now faces first and second-degree murder charges for allegedly murdering the man.
The victim, who has not been identified, was found dead near the town of Orting, Washington, with a gunshot wound and suspected stab wounds.
Investigators state in a probable-cause document that the man had previously been in a relationship with Davies’s mother, and that she and her son had lived with him, reports The Olympian.
Court papers state that when police found Davies, he was wandering around with no shirt or shoes on.
“Davies initially told a detective that he could not remember what had happened to him, or where he had been during his disappearance,” prosecutors wrote in court documents.
“He later stated that he could not say what had happened to him because people were going to hurt him.”
Prosecutors say that the suspects allegedly wore gloves and dark clothes and broke into the victim’s home through a doggy door.
Davies’ father told investigators that his son had been threatened by members of a “specific outlaw motorcycle club”, who were friends of the victim, to break into the house and steal a specific item.
He claimed that Davies recruited the other suspect to help him steal the item and that the victim was shot during the break-in, although no more details are given.
The father told police that his son was then found by members of the biker gang who “drove him around, roughing him up before releasing him.”
Both suspects have been charged as adults and also face first-degree burglary charges and two counts of second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. They are being held on $1m bail.