Last month we reported on the search for witnesses to a shooting near Costco that police originally described as “road rage.” It happened on 4th Avenue South on July 21st, and the victim was a 68-year-old longtime West Seattleite named Bob Jensen. Today, after a tip, we’ve just confirmed via court documents that the man who admitted to shooting Mr. Jensen is in jail, charged Friday with second-degree murder. The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office summarizes the shooting as:
On Thursday, July 21, 2022, the defendant was involved in an altercation with the victim close to the Costco parking lot in Seattle, just after 10 am in the morning. The confrontation began when the defendant refused to allow the victim to merge his vehicle in front of the defendant’s car when the street they were traveling on (4th Avenue South, Seattle) reduced from two lanes to one. Both vehicles continued driving for less than a mile and proceeded to stop at an intersection next to Costco. The defendant was the first to come to a stop at the red light, with no cars in front of him, when he saw the victim’s vehicle stop immediately behind his. The victim got out of his vehicle and approached the defendant. The defendant then chose to exit his vehicle and engaged with the victim while armed with a firearm. The victim, an unarmed sixty-eight year old man, was shot by the defendant within seconds of the victim exiting his vehicle.
The suspect, 38-year-old Angel A. Valderrama of Kirkland, was one of five people who called 911 just after the shooting, and was questioned at the scene, but not arrested at the time. The charging documents say Valderrama has no record of criminal convictions and that he did have a concealed-carry permit for the gun, a loaded 9mm Glock handgun that police seized at the scene. The charging documents add, without elaboration, that Valderrama “has had a number of interactions with law enforcement related to his possession of firearms.” He told police that he fired his gun on July 21st because he believed Mr. Jensen had something in his hand that could have been a weapon, but at least one witness said otherwise. The documents also say the shooting was recorded by a camera belonging to Costco, describing the view as “distant and grainy” but saying that the video shows there was “little or no time for any significant interaction between the two men” before Mr. Jensen was shot, and that it contradicts other elements of Valderrama’s story. The documents also say that while Mr. Jensen also had a concealed-carry permit, he was not armed when he was shot, and that no gun was found in his pickup truck, nor anything else that could have been construed as a weapon, aside from a folding pocket knife found beneath papers in the driver’s-door pocket. Valderrama is being held in lieu of $2 million bail; the jail register says he was arrested Saturday afternoon.
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