‘Ticking time bombs’: KIRO hosts question how an 8x felon on active supervision was free to kill a man in Westlake Park

A 39-year-old man on active state Department of Corrections supervision has been charged with second-degree murder in the fatal beating of a stranger in Seattle’s Westlake Park.

Jake Skorheim and fill-in co-host Greg Tomlin said the case represents everything broken about the system’s handling of repeat offenders.

“This was an eight-time convicted felon who’s the suspect here in the death of this 67-year-old,” Greg said on “The Jake and Spike Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “He was on active State Department of Corrections supervision at the time of Thursday’s homicide for a 2024 second-degree assault conviction.”

Jake said the supervision clearly wasn’t enough.

“If you’re on active supervision, how is it that you can have a mental health breakdown and go and kill somebody in a very bloody fashion?” Jake said.

Police were called to Westlake Park around 6:42 a.m. on Sept. 10 after a woman waiting for a bus reported seeing two men fighting. She told 911 the younger man put the other in a chokehold with his legs, and the victim was screaming for police.

“The victim then stopped moving, but the assailant continued to hit him,” Jake said. “And then when police found him, he was identified also by his bloody shoes.”

Officers spotted the suspect nearby in the park and casually asked from a patrol vehicle if he was the man in the fight. He confirmed he was.

Greg calls repeat offenders ‘ticking time bombs’

Greg said the suspect’s profile is a textbook example of the kind of person the system keeps cycling back onto the streets.

“If this person is found guilty, I think they sort of represent a poster child for the problems that continue to plague a lot of the Seattle area,” Greg said. “Probably a homeless dude.”

“He is a homeless dude. He told the police,” Jake confirmed.

“Probably has mental health issues, either brought on by drugs or born with it. Has a criminal rap sheet the size of Seattle’s downtown core, and is just wandering the streets waiting to commit another crime,” Greg said.

Greg noted the threshold for consequences has become dangerously narrow.

“The threshold for locking people up appears to be murder and only murder,” Greg said. “I know I’m making a generalization here, but these repeat offenders are just ticking time bombs, and we know that this very small group of repeat offenders are the ones who commit the most heinous crimes. You’ve got to do something about that.”

Jake, Greg question what ‘active supervision’ actually means

Jake pressed on the gap between what supervision is supposed to prevent and what actually happened.

“You’re on supervision for another case, and you’re out and about and able to, you took a man’s, he took a man’s life, allegedly, I need to say, until the case is solved,” Jake said.

Greg acknowledged the limits of the system.

“What does active supervision include or entail? From what I understand, it’s not like an ongoing observation round-the-clock 24/7 kind of deal,” Greg said. “It’s things like when you report to a community corrections officer; you stay within a certain area, and you can’t leave that area. It doesn’t involve someone who’s got an eye on you constantly.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to “The Jake and Spike Show” weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio 97.3