Detectives track down teen suspects in murder of Puyallup store owner

Detectives in Pierce County say they’ve identified two teenage suspects in the murder of a 79-year-old store owner.

One 16-year-old suspect was found dead on the shoreline at the Chinook Landing Marina along Marine View Drive in northeast Tacoma on Monday morning. Investigators with the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office observed that the body recovered appeared to be that of a young black male that had suffered a fatal gunshot wound and been in the water for several hours.

The other suspect was arrested in a parking lot in Northeast Tacoma, without incident, early Wednesday morning and booked for murder.

“We’re not going to name who we believe did which act until we get through all the evidence and we can pinpoint it and conclusively say what happened,” Pierce County Sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer told the Dori Monson Show.

Soon Ja Nam was shot and killed during a robbery Saturday evening at the neighborhood convenience store near Puyallup, the Handy Corner, that she owned with her husband. According to witnesses, two armed suspects went into the store demanding cash, and after she handed it over, one of the suspects shot her in the back. They fled the scene in a gray 4-door Nissan Sentra.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office located the suspect vehicle outside of the county on Sunday. They had asked businesses along 112th Street to check their surveillance video for any suspect or vehicle information.

Troyer said that detectives are still serving search warrants and gathering evidence in the case.

“We’re not going to leave any stone unturned, even though we have the two people that we know — positively, we’re 100-percent sure — were responsible for this,” he said. “One is deceased, the other is in jail on murder charges, but we’re going to continue to work this case over the next couple of days to make sure we recover every bit of evidence that’s out there.”

The 16-year-old in the Pierce County Jail will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.

“To find out it was a couple of 16-year-old boys, it really turns it into a tragedy … it was all senseless and didn’t need to happen,” Troyer said.

In a previous interview on Monday, Troyer had said that the outpouring of love for the Handy Corner from the neighborhood had been stronger than any community response to tragedy that he has ever seen.

“It’s the community support that helped us solve this case so quickly,” he said.