Hearing for Fall City teen accused of killing family delayed again

The hearing for a teen accused of killing his family in Fall City was delayed again, KOMO News reported Tuesday.

Judge Veronica Galvan rejected the defense team’s request for another year to prepare for the hearing, but still postponed it. The hearing will determine if the case is moved from juvenile to adult court.

KOMO News noted the hearing was already postponed from June to September.

“I want to be very clear here, what you have proposed you need to do, this court finds, is overreach,” Galvan said, according to the media outlet. “This is not the trial—we are not going to have a mini trial in order to determine jurisdiction.”

However, the defense argued the hearing should not be rushed and said it has been hard to gather information from witnesses. They also said that because the children were homeschooled, there are no school files.

Galvan eventually set the hearing date for sometime in April 2026, KOMO News reported.

Fall City family murdered

The decision comes nearly a year after five members of the Humiston family—Mark, 43, and Sarah Humiston, 42, and three of their children, Benjamin, 13, Joshua, 9, and Katheryn, 7—were murdered in their home in Fall City.

Law enforcement from all over the region responded to the mass shooting on the morning of October 21. When deputies arrived at the home, they found the victims shot to death.

“Very, very sad,” King County Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall told KIRO Newsradio in a press conference near the scene of the crime. “Very disturbed. I know that my team will do an excellent job in investigating this and we will determine the facts related to this incident.”

A fourth child, the suspect’s 11-year-old sister, was shot during the mass shooting within the home, but was able to get away. She was previously released from the hospital.

15-year-old son charged

The 15-year-old suspect is currently in secure detention at the Patricia H. Clarke Children and Family Justice Center in Seattle.

He was charged with five counts of aggravated first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (KCPAO).

At the time, Judge Kristin Richardson ordered that the suspect not be photographed, videotaped, or recorded above the shoulders and that his face not appear on TV. Richardson also ordered that his name not be revealed.

The ensuing investigation

More recently, a judge ruled that no misconduct was committed by the defense in the Fall City case.

Allegations of evidence tampering were made after prosecutors with KCPAO claimed there was “evidence that the defense’s search exceeded beyond what was permitted.”

KCPAO accused the defense investigation of moving items within the crime scene that they weren’t supposed to touch, entering a room they weren’t allowed in, moving items while in that room and removing one item from the crime scene entirely.

Defense counsel also alleged that the King County Sheriff’s Office went outside the scope of their documentation of the home, alleging they altered or modified certain parts of the residence. Counsel asked to find intentional misconduct on the part of the state, which the judge also declined to do.

The court documents filed were obtained by KIRO Newsradio and MyNorthwest from independent journalist Steve Hickey, also known as PhotogSteve81 on social media.

Defense attorneys file motion to preserve evidence

Five days after the shooting, defense attorneys for the teen suspect filed a motion to preserve evidence after learning the suspect’s maternal grandmother, Ms. Ogden, the current trustee of the residence, was not allowing the defense team back in the home where the murders happened. She also had hired a cleaning crew to come into the home.

“Here, it is that the critical defense has full access to the crime scene,” the defense’s motion stated in obtained court documents. “If the home is cleaned and items are destroyed before defense can access it, evidence will be lost and defense will have no means of obtaining that evidence in the future.”

The defense team was able to enter the home before the property was released back to Ogden on Oct. 24, but wanted more time with the crime scene. The defense team claimed they were only allowed in the house for one hour.

The defense team was able to return to the crime scene on Oct. 29, accompanied by the King County Sheriff’s Office, which digitally documented the residence before the defense team was given access to the home, according to KING 5.

The document filed by Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jason Brookhyser with KCPAO on Nov. 4, also obtained by independent journalist Steve Hickey, claimed multiple items throughout the house were moved, and that the defense team exceeded what was permitted.

Specifically, multiple children’s backpacks were moved slightly, and a pair of shoes that were not placed in any particular order under a bench were later arranged under the bench. The pair of shoes included one that was originally found outside the home. A bottle of Clorox wipes went missing, and multiple items were “moved and manipulated” in the bedroom of the family’s lone survivor of the mass shooting, the 11-year-old girl. The defense team was barred from entering that room, according to the court documents.

“From (the) KCSO’s documentation of the residence before and after defense’s search, it is clear that defense counsel and their agents exceeded the permitted scope of their search under the court’s order,” the prosecutors’ Nov. 4 document read. “Examples of these potential violations include defense handling and moving items in the front entryway, as well as the girls’ and boys’ room to observe what was not in plain view.”

In response, the defense team claimed it was actually the King County Sheriff’s Office that moved or altered objects within the crime scene.

Details on the judge’s ruling

Due to the fact that the crime scene was turned over to a family member while the ensuing investigative searches were happening, the judge ruled that none of the allegations from either party had merit, meaning no misconduct was committed.

The judge also stated it was unlikely that any forensics gathered during the defense’s investigation would have merit in court due to the tampered crime scene of the Fall City shooting.

“A myriad of people had gone through there, a myriad of people have touched who knows what,” Judge Galvan said, according to KING 5.

This story was originally published on December 3, 2024. It has been updated and republished since then.

Contributing: Julia Dallas, MyNorthwest; Steve Coogan

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