Suspect held on $1 million bond after woman found dead outside MLT home

Bail has been set at $1 million for a Mountlake Terrace man arrested in Monday’s early-morning beating death of a 29-year-old woman in the 23600 block of 53rd Avenue West.

MLTnews is not naming the suspect, as formal charges have yet to be brought.

According to police documents filed with the court, 911 dispatchers received a call from a man saying that he had hit his deceased son’s girlfriend and that she was lying unconscious outside his home.

After police arrived, they found the victim “obviously deceased” in the driveway with massive trauma to her head. Police found what documents described as a blood-covered “large wooden stick about the size of a baseball bat” lying next to the body.

A 43-year-old male suspect inside the residence was taken into custody. According to court documents, the man told police that his 25-year-old son, who lived in the home along with his girlfriend, had died the previous week from a drug overdose. He said that the son and girlfriend were involved in drug dealing and kept a ledger with records of these transactions. He further stated that the girlfriend was present at the time of the overdose, but did nothing to help his son, and that he (the suspect) was upset about this.

The suspect went on to tell police that he contacted the girlfriend on Nov. 11 and told her to come over to the house and remove her belongings, which he threw out into the front yard prior to her arrival. When the woman arrived at approximately 4 p.m., the suspect said that the two sat on the couch and talked for several hours about drug dealing and use of drugs, “crying but not arguing.” When the suspect told the girlfriend that he would turn the drug ledger over to police, she “unexpectedly hit him on the forehead with an iPad,” police documents said.

The suspect then told police that after he was struck, he grabbed a large stick that he kept behind the front door for protection, hitting the woman with it. He also admitted that he “went into a rage,” adding he wasn’t “exactly sure” what happened after he was struck as he was unable to remember details. In addition, he told police that he did not know how the two ended up outside the house.

He said he left the victim lying in the driveway, went back into the residence and fell asleep. Upon waking, he called 911 and reported what had occurred.

— By Larry Vogel