18-year-old murdered inside South Sound apartment complex

TACOMA, Wash. — A teenager described by neighbors as a caregiver for his disabled dad was shot and killed inside a South Sound apartment complex.

Now authorities are asking for help catching his killer.

That shooting happened at about 9 o’clock Saturday night.  It’s the latest in a string of mostly unrelated homicides thus far this year in the City of Destiny.

There have already been six homicides since January.

It’s a grim tally.  Five of those homicides occurred in the month of February.

The most recent one happened here Saturday night.

In the light of this rain-soaked Sunday, a murder hours earlier inside an apartment complex full of residents.

“I had the TV on and all of a sudden I heard these gunshots, four of them,” said Kathleen Gindt.

The nearly five-month resident describes hearing the gunshots from inside her fourth-floor apartment in the Housing Hilltop South complex in the dark of a tragic night.

“Then I heard screaming,” Gindt said. “‘Help.’ And ‘No, no, no.’ I was scared even to open the door and look out and see.”

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Tacoma police say 911 calls began coming in at about 9 o’clock Saturday night. When officers arrived, they found an 18-year-old male mortally wounded inside.  They administered first aid until Tacoma fire medics arrived.  Medics pronounced him dead.

“It’s tragic,” said Tacoma police officer Shelbie Boyd.

She says this is the sixth murder in Tacoma in the first seven and a half weeks of a new year, five in the last two weeks alone.

Boyd was asked if the murders were tied. “Not that I am aware of,” she said. “But the one thing that links them all is the tragedy, the families, what they have to go through.”

That is already apparent. Eight-month resident Adrianna Navarro started a memorial inside the building, a reflection of their sadness for the teenager and the father for whom they say he was a caretaker.  And there’s their own fear.

“I shouldn’t have to carry a weapon to go do my laundry,” Navarro said. “That’s the point it’s gotten to.”

She and her neighbors believe the teenager knew his killers, may even have let them into the building.

Arrests have been made in two of the murders so far this year.

So, if you know anything about any of the others, especially the one here Saturday night, you’re asked to give Tacoma police a call.

They want video, audio, or anything that could lead to an arrest.

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