Suspect in 2022 Ingraham High School shooting pleads guilty to first-degree murder

The teenage suspect in the Ingraham High School shooting from 2022 officially pled guilty to three felony charges Monday, June 10, according to the King County Prosecutor’s Office.

Among the felony charges, he pled guilty to murder in the first degree with a firearm enhancement assault in the first degree. Due to the age of the shooter, he will spend the next several years in juvenile detention.

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“That means that he’ll stay in juvenile rehabilitation as long as the law allows, which is until his 21st birthday and no earlier,” Casey McNerthney, spokesperson for the King County Prosecutor’s Office, told KIRO Newsradio. After that, he will become eligible for two years of parole.

In November 2022, the shooter — 14 years old at the time — brought a gun to campus and shot and killed another student, age 17. According to students on campus that day, two people — the suspect and the victim — started fighting in a hallway when things quickly escalated. The incident occurred at approximately 9:55 a.m. At least five shots were fired.

While the motive of the murder has remained unclear, law enforcement stated they didn’t believe it was a random act of violence.

“An Ingraham High School student was shot and killed this morning on campus in what is to be believed to be a targeted attack,” Brent Jones, superintendent of Seattle Public Schools, stated to the press back in November 2022.

The shooter fled alongside a 15-year-old accomplice. They were found and arrested while aboard a bus on Aurora Avenue an hour after the shooting. He was carrying a backpack, with investigators finding a semi-automatic weapon — a Glock-brand, model 32 handgun — inside it along with ammunition that matched the bullet casings found at Ingraham High School.

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According to a witness who was with the 17-year-old victim following the disagreement and subsequent fight outside of class that led to the shooting approximately 10 minutes later, the altercation started because the 14-year-old believed the victim stole his cell phone.

The 17-year-old shot and killed at Ingraham High School was identified as Ebenezer Haile.

Contributing: Sam Campbell, KIRO Newsradio

Frank Sumrall is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here and you can email him here.