An active duty sailor has been charged with shooting three strangers, one of them fatally, last month outside a Seattle nightclub.
Victor Marshall, 23, was arrested Monday at Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, Washington, the Seattle Times reported. Prosecutors charged him Thursday with one count of second degree murder and two counts of first degree assault, each with a firearm enhancement.
“The two surviving victims were engaged in an argument among themselves when they were shot by the defendant,” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Raymond Lee wrote in charging papers. “There does not appear to be a clear explanation why the defendant felt the need to shoot three separate strangers in a public place.”
Prosecutors said the two survivors, a man and a woman, both 25, were arguing outside the OHM club just before 2 a.m. on February 25. Stuart Roberts II, also 25, and a female friend tried to de-escalate the argument when Marshall, who was sitting on the trunk of a car with his gun, opened fire.
Roberts was hit four times, charging documents say. He was taken to Virginia Mason Medical Center with gunshot wounds and ultimate transferred to Harborview Medical Center, where he died. Officers who responded to the hospital reported seeing blood and a handgun in the car that brought him there, but the documents did not identify who that car belonged to.
The documents say that Marshall’s tattoos appear to match those seen on the murderer in surveillance footage. Police have not located the gun that killed Roberts, however.
Marshall is being held on a $4 million bail and faces 41 to 53 years in prison if he is convicted. He is scheduled for arraignment on Wednesday.
