A Maple Valley man who shot his wife and two adult children was charged on Tuesday with three counts of second-degree attempted murder.
Wycliffe Brown Seda, 55, is being held on $5 million bail at the King County jail. He will be arraigned May 9.
Seda was arrested after police say he shot his 52-year-old wife and their two adult children at a home in the 23000 block of Southeast 260th Street on April 21.
Around midnight, Seda refused to let his wife use one of the family cars to pick up their son from the airport, according to charging documents. When the son finally got home, he confronted Seda, who attacked the son and knocked him to the ground, according to the documents.
As the fight escalated, the documents read, Seda's daughter intervened and the three family members stopped fighting, and began to argue.
"Without warning the defendant pulled out a loaded handgun and shot his son and daughter multiples times, in center mass, and fled the room," the charging document read.
Seda then went downstairs, where he saw his wife and shot her as she tried to run away from him, according to the charging document.
Multiple 911 calls were made and deputies were dispatched.
The first call came from Seda around midnight, during which a dispatcher could hear him saying "I'm defending myself" and "please get back!" while other people yelled in the background, according to charging documents. At one point, the dispatcher heard Seda's son say "You attacked me!"
For the first several minutes of the call, Seda didn't respond to dispatch. After about three minutes, the dispatcher could hear numerous gunshots, according to charging documents.
Shortly after the gunshots were heard, Seda told the dispatcher, "I shot at the kids, they were hitting me."
The first 911 call disconnected, but when dispatch called Seda back, he told dispatch he was downstairs and trying to "help his wife." Dispatch asked if someone had shot Seda, and he responded "No they had weapons, they were hitting me with wood, kicking me."
The dispatcher asked Seda if he shot his wife and he replied, "Yeah, I shot them," according to charging documents.
Seda's wife also called 911, telling dispatch he was lying about being attacked by his family, and that she and two others were shot. In a separate 911 call, Seda's children told dispatch that their father shot them, according to charging documents.
When King County Sheriff's Office deputies arrived, they found Seda in the driveway holding a cellphone, with a semiautomatic pistol in his pants pocket.
All three victims were taken to Harborview Medical Center, where they underwent emergency surgery. Last week, Harborview spokesperson Susan Gregg said that two were in critical condition and one was in serious condition. The hospital did not immediately return a request for an update on their conditions.
In the days after the shooting, detectives learned that Seda had a history of domestic violence, according to charging documents. The defendant's son "recalls [Seda] hitting him when he asked for help with his homework as a child," the charging document reads. The defendant's daughter "remembers being a teenager and [Seda] hitting her so hard that she fell backwards and injured her hand," the document reads.
Both children recalled Seda being physically abusive toward their mother. In addition, a woman with whom Seda was having an affair filed for a civil protection order in 2019, saying that he would threaten her with a gun and that he told her he would kill her if she didn't "behave," according to charging documents.
