Prosecutors say a convicted cocaine dealer wanted on a warrant for a 2013 drug delivery conviction gunned down Central District teacher Brent McDonald “without cause, provocation or apparent reason” in the December slaying of the popular artist on a Belltown street.
55-year-old Richard Whitaker has been charged with second degree murder and is held on $2 million bail in King County Jail.
According to court documents, police tracked down Whitaker, who goes by the name Richard Roundtree and also by the street name Snipe, using video surveillance that captured images of the suspect the morning of the December 13th shooting, and with information from a tip line caller who said Whitaker’s girlfriend admitted she had witnessed the murder.
Prosecutors say the surveillance video “showed the victim approaching and passing one of the suspects on foot. That suspect then shot the victim who collapsed to the ground.”
“The defendant, without cause, provocation or apparent reason, shot and killed a man who was simply passing the defendant on a downtown Seattle sidewalk,” prosecutors wrote.
The suspect’s girlfriend has not been charged in the crime in exchange for providing information under a “cooperation agreement” with police. The woman said she was with Whitaker when he shot McDonald and drove the suspect in her Mercedes Benz station wagon seen on the security video to his sister’s South Park home.
Whitaker has been convicted for delivery of cocaine four times since 1991. Prosecutors say he now faces 30 years in prison if convicted.
McDonald, 49, is remembered as a longtime instructor and youth mentor at 23rd and E Cherry’s Coyote Central, a nonprofit that exposes middle school students to the arts.
I’m so glad SPD caught McDonald’s murderer and I hope the creep gets everything he so richly deserves.
3 meals a day, free housing for life with medical and gym?
No, nailed by some other prisoner.
@Patrick: What on earth is your problem? I think you owe an apology for your thoroughly tasteless and tacky comment to every friend and relative of the deceased who reads it. Prisons are not summer camps (most especially for murderers) and if you are in favor of the death penalty, this may not be the forum to express such an opinion.
Yes, people are being put on waiting lists to get to experience that sweet, sweet prison life.
Pay it no mind. Glad SPD is solving these.
Did the police ever figure out what actually happened between the killer and the victim? Generally if you’re murdered at 3am by a coke dealer, there’s a bit more to the story than chance. My limited experience with coke dealers suggests that they tend not to go around killing random people on the street as it’s bad for business. They might use violence to protect themselves and their profits from robbery but they typically aren’t psychotic enough to just shoot people for fun.
Was a chunk of this story redacted or left out, or was the final verdict that he was just on a 3am stroll when a coke dealer who didn’t even know him decided to shoot him for no good reason? I realize it’s possible but something about this doesn’t seem to add up.
““The defendant, without cause, provocation or apparent reason, shot and killed a man who was simply passing the defendant on a downtown Seattle sidewalk,” prosecutors wrote.”
While I agree this seems odd, that is what they are saying. If anything was left out, it clearly wasn’t caught on camera and chances are we will never know. Regardless, I can’t imagine he did anything that warranted being shot and killed.
I agree that there’s little he could’ve done that would have warranted being killed, but something seems amiss.
In the video it looks like he’s talking to suspect for a second, but that’s not mentioned anywhere. The video only covers one small chunk of the sidewalk for a minute or so. Clearly it is only a tiny piece of this puzzle.
I also find it unlikely that the suspect would say he shot him for no reason. Is his testimony available?
I’m not saying it was a drug deal done bad, but I am suspicious that the real story is being hidden.
There are often very logical reasons for the prosecution and the defense to mutually agree to a plea that leaves out specific motives for the crime.
In this case, if the deceased was in fact murdered in a drug related crime, the prosecutor is not going to include that detail willingly as it makes his case less sympathetic to the public and a potential jury. The defense, likewise, is not going to include details of a potential additional crime that could get his client more time.
That makes sense for a plea deal I guess. It just seems like if it goes to trial, what happened between the two of them that night couldn’t really be omitted too easily. Are those types of agreements only held in place if a deal is reached and then if it goes to trial all bets are off?