Tri-Cities felon faces life sentence for killing Everett police officer
A convicted Tri-Cities felon with a decades-long history of crime is facing a life sentence for killing Everett police Officer Dan Rocha.
A Snohomish County jury found Richard Rotter, 51, guilty on Monday of first-degree aggravated murder after about four hours of deliberations. The crime comes with a mandatory life term without the possibility of parole.
He was also found guilty of illegally possessing a gun and possessing meth, fentanyl and heroin with the intent to deliver it, and attempting to elude police.
The verdict came after nearly two weeks of testimony.
Police officials watching hugged after hearing the verdict, the Everett Herald said. Chief Dan Templeman said the decision came with mixed feelings.
“While on the one hand, I am pleased to see that the defendant will be held accountable for his actions to the fullest extent of the law, it still doesn’t bring Dan back, nor does it change the fact that his family lost a loving son, husband, brother and father,” he said in a post on the Everett police Facebook page.
In March 2022, Rocha spotted Rotter moving guns between two cars in the parking lot at a Starbucks in Everett, north of Seattle.
The two talked calmly until Rocha tried to arrest Rotter for illegally possessing a firearm, the Everett Herald reported at the time. As they struggled, Rotter pulled out a Glock from a shoulder holster.
He shot Rocha five times, including three times in the head.
Rotter fled in a blue Mini Cooper, running over the officer’s body on his way out of the parking lot, the Herald reported. Police caught him after he caused a three-car crash.
Rotter’s defense attorney Natalie Taratino tried to convince the jury that a combination of drugs and post-traumatic stress disorder drove Rotter to shoot the officer without thinking, the Everett Herald reported.
Deputy Prosecutor Craig Matheson asked jurors to use “common sense” when determining if the crime was premeditated, according to the Everett Herald.
Tri-Cities history
Rotter had a lengthy criminal history in the Tri-Cities with crimes dating back to when he was a teen in the mid-1980s. Once he became an adult, he had 19 convictions, all but one in Benton and Franklin counties.
Other than a conviction for an assault in 1993, most of Rotter’s crimes have not been violent, according to court documents.
He has seven convictions for drug possession and five for attempting to run from police.
In a 2019 escape, Rotter was wanted after he skipped out on probation for drug possession. A Richland detective spotted him and notified the U.S. Marshals Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force, according to a Tri-City Herald story at the time.
When police surrounded Rotter at a Shell station on Goethals Drive in Richland, he backed into a police car to escape.
About six years earlier, he rammed another police car to escape members of the U.S. Marshals Task Force. This time in Pasco, the Tri-City Herald reported.
A year before that, he was wanted for skipping out on court hearings while facing charges of possession of oxymorphone, heroin, malicious mischief and forgery.
