At three o’clock in the morning on December 13, 2015, Richard Whitaker shot a man walking toward him and his girlfriend on a Seattle sidewalk. The bullet lodged itself in the right side of the man’s chest, and by the time medics delivered the man to Harborview Medical Center, he was declared dead.
Whitaker did not know the man he shot. Fifty-five years old, short and stocky, Whitaker dealt crack, as he had done for most of his life. He started carrying a gun after he had been stabbed, attacked multiple times, and held up at gunpoint on the street, according to his publicly appointed defense attorney. Whitaker’s first conviction for dealing crack came before he was old enough to drink, and three more drug convictions followed. Then assault, theft, attempting to elude. A burglary conviction lengthened his rap sheet, too. In 2014, Whitaker was convicted of yet another drug charge, but he failed to show up when the verdict was delivered. The judge in that case issued a warrant for Whitaker’s arrest the same day, but he was never caught. Had Whitaker showed up for the verdict, or had authorities found him afterward, he would have been in prison—not on the Belltown sidewalk that night with the man he killed.
