Verdict returned in killing of 12-year-old Skyway boy

At trial, King County prosecutors offered testimony placing Walker at the shooting scene, as well as DNA showing Walker handled the pistol and shells used to kill the Skyway boy. While the defense contended the pistol was fired by another man, that did not explain how Walker’s DNA landed on a pistol – the murder weapon – he claims to have never seen.

What was not disputed Wednesday was the tragic nature of the random violence that snuffed Brown’s young life on April 29, 2010.

Brown was walking home carrying a $20 pair of football cleats he’d paid for with his own money when a pair of Cadillacs pulled up near a 7-Eleven store. Brown was fatally wounded seconds later, when a .38-caliber bullet blew into his back.

Taking the stand in his own defense, Walker tried to explain away allegations that he targeted the preteen at random following a shooting the boy had no connection to. He argued that another man with him that day was the gunman, and that he had no idea the boy had been shot or killed.

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At trial, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Jessica Berliner said Walker killed Brown because he thought he was associated with a group of men he’d been in a shootout moments before.

At 12, Brown was tall for his age. He also happened to be wearing blue – Crip gang colors to Walker’s eye, Berliner said – like the gangsters who’d been involved in the earlier gunfight. So, the prosecution offered, Walker decided to get a little revenge on the bigger than average child, and shot him down in a 7-Eleven parking lot.

Minutes before what King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg previously called "a fatal case of mistaken identity," a shootout occurred at the Cedar Village Apartments, at 6240 S. 129th St.

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A personal disagreement among several gang-involved men devolved into gunfire. One man, a friend of Walker's, took a bullet in the groin and another in the shoulder.

The shooters fled. Walker, his wife and an associate split as well before happening upon Brown.

Meanwhile, Brown hopped off the bus at 12848 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S. carrying his new cleats in a white shopping bag, and heading for the home he wouldn't reach.

Surveillance video at the nearby 7-Eleven showed the boy walking from the bus, a King County Sheriff’s Office detective said in court documents. Brown walks from the camera's view, then is seen falling to the ground in front of the store.

Shot in the back, he died at the scene.

“The defendant shot him, mistaking him for someone else,” Berliner told the jury. “That’s it. That’s all it was.”

Brown's family had recently come to the area from Texas, hoping to find economic opportunity and a better life. The boy's violent, senseless death came as a shock and, Satterberg said previously, "cried out for justice."

Through the investigation, detectives determined Walker fled the scene in a 15-year-old Cadillac Seville, Berliner said. The car's driver, rrying to race away, crashed into another car then continued to flee.

A witness to the hit-and-run crash followed the two men to the 2900 block of Naches Avenue Southwest in Renton – a highly secure Bank of America cash processing center – where the driver left the car and ran into a grassy field nearby.

Assisted by a security officer at the Bank of America facility who'd watched the commotion on a surveillance camera, a Renton police officer recovered three pistols hidden in the field.

In the weeks that followed, investigators flew to rural Louisiana to visit the Cadillac’s driver, who’d fled following the shooting. Prosecutors say the man fingered Walker for the shooting; he told the detective Walker's goal was payback for his injured friend.

Walker now claims the Cadillac driver – an acquaintance and neighbor of his, who fired another gun during the apartment complex shootout – actually was the one who killed Brown.

Asserting that authorities have been “coddling the shooter,” defense attorney Jerry Stimmel offered that his client was in another nearby car when the Cadillac driver pulled the .38-caliber revolver and fired at Brown. According to the defense, Walker then ran from the other car and got into the Cadillac – it belongs to his wife – in an effort to protect his property.

Several witnesses for the prosecution are expected to testify that Walker was outside the car immediately after shots were fired. Berliner said Walker’s DNA was also found on shells loaded in the revolver when police recovered it.

“Everything that’s credible … points to the defendant” as the killer, Berliner said.

“Everything about this crime was wrong,” she continued. “And the only thing that even begins to make this wrong right is to see (Brown’s) killer convicted.”

Walker remains jailed.

Check the Seattle 911 crime blog for more Seattle crime news. Visit seattlepi.com's home page for more Seattle news.

Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.