Traffic cameras captured an unprovoked fatal shooting in Federal Way last summer, helping investigators identify the 22-year-old suspected gunman, who was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder, according to prosecutors.
Patrick Tables Jr. was arrested Monday at the state Department of Corrections office in West Seattle and booked into the King County Jail, where he remains in custody in lieu of $4 million bail, jail and court records show.
Tables is accused of shooting 19-year-old Andre Davis when their vehicles were stopped next to each other on July 30 at an intersection on Federal Way's southwest border, charging papers say. Tables, who is also charged with first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, is scheduled to be arraigned June 15 at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.
Tables was arrested nearly a month after the fatal shooting, suspected in a string of Bellevue car prowls, and remained jailed until January, when he posted $75,000 bail.
Messages obtained from Tables' Snapchat account as part of the Bellevue case showed he was involved in selling guns, charging papers say. And a Snapchat conversation detailed in a homicide case filing shows Tables was negotiating the sale or trade of the same kind of pistol believed to have been used in Davis' killing.
Just after 8:30 p.m. on July 30, traffic-camera footage showed a Chevrolet Impala pull up alongside a Mercedes-Benz at the corner of Southwest 356th Street and 21st Avenue Southwest, the charges say. The Impala's male driver then reaches across his female passenger and fires multiple gunshots at the other driver, who turns onto 21st Avenue Southwest before crashing into trees and a utility box and rolling his car, according to the charges.
Police found Davis' body in his overturned Mercedes-Benz. An autopsy determined he died from gunshot wounds to his head, chest, shoulder and leg, according to the charges.
Federal Way detectives checked the 50 Chevrolet Impalas manufactured between 2003 and 2016 that were registered in King and Pierce counties. Less than a week after Davis was killed, charging papers say they found a gray Impala that matched the car seen in the traffic camera footage parked in a stall outside an apartment building three miles northeast of the shooting scene.
Police seized the car, which was registered to Tables, and found two fired cartridge cases and Tables' fingerprints inside, say the charges, which note that Tables did not report the car stolen or call police to see if it had been impounded.
Cellphone records showed that a phone registered to Tables was near the homicide scene at the time of the shooting, charging papers say, and his search history showed he began looking for news accounts about Davis' killing within 20 minutes of the deadly incident.
