Seattle police say four men arrested Wednesday in a string of armed home-invasion robberies targeting Asian residents in South Seattle deliberately selected their victims based on race.
The four men made their first court appearances Thursday, and a judge found probable cause to hold them on investigation of varying counts of robbery and burglary. Three of them are also accused of committing a hate crime, according to Casey McNerthney, a spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
The men, ages 26 to 32, were all ordered held on bail set between $1.25 million and $2 million.
The Seattle Times is not naming the men because they have not yet been criminally charged. Charges are expected to be filed Friday.
A 16-year-old boy also appeared Thursday in King County Juvenile Court and was ordered held in detention for his alleged role in the robberies, McNerthney said.
Seattle police have previously said groups of three to seven armed assailants committed 14 home-invasion robberies between June and August in four South Seattle neighborhoods. The four men arrested Wednesday have each been connected to between two and five of those robberies, according to probable causes statements outlining the police investigation. (Probable cause statements are not released in juvenile criminal cases, so it's not yet known how many robberies the 16-year-old allegedly participated in.)
"The victims in this series are of Asian descent. The overall investigation indicates that the victims were intentionally selected based on the suspects' ... perceptions of the victims' race or ancestry," the lead Seattle police robbery detective wrote in probable cause statements to justify why the four men should also be charged with a hate crime. "The victims were selected, their homes were invaded where they were then threatened and subjected to violence."
Three of the four men are suspected of robbing a Seattle couple in June, then robbing their adult son hours later at his home in Renton, the statements say.
During coordinated arrests early Wednesday at residences in Seattle and Lakewood, Pierce County, Seattle police also arrested three other men — one for his alleged role in a June home-invasion robbery of an Asian couple in Des Moines and a second man who was found in a car with a handgun and a bag filled with hundreds of "blues," a street term for illicit fentanyl pills, according to some of the statements. A third man was arrested on suspicion of a misdemeanor.
A Seattle police detective noted the man with the fentanyl pills "may have close ties with multiple suspects in these robberies who are still yet to be placed in custody," according to the probable cause statement detailing his arrest.
Thousands of dollars in cash, jewelry, passports, foreign currency, debit cards, handbags, Amazon packages and homegrown marijuana are among the items reported stolen in the break-ins attributed to the four adult suspects accused of committing multiple Seattle robberies, according the probable cause statements.
In a June home-invasion on Beacon Hill, five masked assailants seemingly fled a house empty-handed after "a firefight in the residence," and two children were present during an August home-invasion in Rainier Beach, the documents say.
