High-School Football Player’s Disappearance Was Staged to Conceal Murder, Prosecutor Says
A high-school football player in Washington state who vanished on his way to practice last week is now accused of staging his own disappearance to evade charges for murdering a 51-year-old man.
Gabriel Davies, a 16-year-old student at Olympia High School, appeared in court Tuesday for the first time since the whole bizarre saga began last Wednesday, when frantic search efforts were launched to find him after he failed to make it to football practice. Many feared the worst after police revealed his car had been found abandoned, with blood inside, and his shattered cellphone on the ground nearby.
Then, in a dizzying turn of events, police announced Davies had been safely found late Thursday—but just hours later he was locked up on suspicion of murder.
Davies, along with another 16-year-old identified as Justin Jiwoon Yoon, now face first-degree and second-degree murder charges for allegedly murdering a 51-year-old man nearly 40 miles away from where Davies initially vanished.
The victim, who has not been identified, was found near the town of Orting on Thursday morning with a gunshot wound and suspected stab wounds in a grisly crime scene that police said contained a “significant amount” of blood, according to court records.
Investigators soon realized the man had previously been in a relationship with Davies’ mother, according to a probable-cause document. The Olympian reports Davies and his mother had also previously lived with the man in his home.
Pierce County Deputy Prosecutor Lisa Wagner alleged at the teens’ arraignment Tuesday that the crime involved a “level of planning” and that Davies had faked his own disappearance in a bid to evade being caught.
Investigators were reportedly skeptical of the teen’s disappearance after they found him late Thursday night, with no shirt or shoes, but also no sign that he’d been wandering around outdoors for the past 36 hours.
“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.”
While the circumstances of the 51-year-old’s murder remain murky, prosecutors allege that Davies and Yoon donned gloves and dark clothing to break into the man’s home using a doggie door.
Davies’ father was quoted in court documents telling investigators that his son had been approached by biker friends of the victim from a “specific outlaw motorcycle club” who threatened him into stealing a certain item from the home.
He said Davies then recruited Yoon for help and the two concocted a “plot” to retrieve the unspecified item sought by the biker gang. After the 51-year-old victim was shot during the course of the break-in, he said, the bikers found Davies and “drove him around, roughing him up before releasing him,” court records state.
Davies and Yoon, both now charged as adults, are being held on $1 million bail. In addition to murder charges, they face first-degree burglary charges and two counts of second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm.
Lawyers for the teens were not immediately available for comment.
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