SPOKANE VALLEY | Bullet Narrowly Misses Toddler

A three-year-old narrowly escaped injury Saturday night when a suspect angry about a noise complaint fired a shot through the wall of an East Sprague apartment complex.

Officers were called to the apartment at 15917 E. Sprague about 10:25 p.m. by a man who reported the suspect shooting at his apartment from the parking lot below.

When Spokane Valley police arrived, they saw a group of people standing on the upper landing and two bullet casings on the ground below.

The complainant told police that he and a friend had been playing cards in another part of the complex and were walking back to his apartment when they were confronted by a pair of males demanding to know why he had called police about noise coming from an apartment next door.

One of the suspects, a man later identified only as “Joe,” said he could “go crazy” at any moment.  He was holding his hand under his sweatshirt near the waistband of his pants.  When he began to lift the object out from under his shirt, the complainant thought it might be a gun and retreated into his apartment.

He told officers he heard a pistol slide being worked as he closed the door.  Moments later, shots were fired into the apartment wall.  One of the bullets went into a bedroom where the complainant’s three-year-old was sleeping. 

The bullet passed through the exterior wall about three feet off the floor, struck a metal bed post on the child’s bed and fell to the blankets.  The child’s mother moved the blanket to check the child and the bullet fell to the floor.

The two suspects were gone when officers arrived.  The complainant’s female neighbor told officers she had only recently met Joe and did not know his last name.  She did admit telling him that the complainant had made noise complaints about her to police.

 Joe was described as a white male who was 25 to 29 years old, six feet tall and thin.  He was clean shaven and possibly left-handed as that was the hand he used to fire a shot into the air.

The suspect wore a white baseball cap with a dark logo, a white zippered and hooded sweatshirt with a black logo, and dark-colored pants.  He had tattoos on his neck, possibly on the left side, of a spiders’ web with cursive writing.

The shooter’s companion was a white male in his 20’s who was about 5’10” tall and had a thin build.  He had a dark complexion with short brown hair and a mustache.  He wore a colored, zippered hoodie and dark jeans.

Anyone with information about this shooting is urged to call Crime Check at 456-2233.