On the morning of July 28, 2025, Juwan Williams, a 48-year-old Black male, arrived at the Northgate Transit Center in Seattle, Washington. As he stepped off an escalator shortly before 8 a.m., his life was tragically cut short in a calculated and sudden act of violence. A man, masked and wearing gloves, ambushed him, firing a single shot to the back of his head.
The assailant attempted to fire a second shot at Williams's chest, but the handgun malfunctioned, and the suspect quickly fled the scene in a gold Chevrolet Malibu. First responders rushed Williams to Harborview Medical Center, where he succumbed to the fatal wound the following day.
The investigation into the death of Juwan Williams moved swiftly as Seattle Police detectives pieced together surveillance footage and witness accounts. Their attention soon turned to 28-year-old Edward Gichuki Kimani. Investigators discovered that Kimani was a classmate of Williams at the Pima Medical Institute, though the motive for the deadly encounter remained unclear. Traffic cameras tracked a gold Chevrolet Malibu leaving Kimani's West Seattle residence on the morning of the shooting and heading toward the transit center. A day after the incident, a police officer pulled Kimani over for driving the suspect vehicle without headlights or a license plate but released him with a warning after Kimani claimed he had just purchased the car.
Armed with mounting evidence, a SWAT team executed a search warrant at Kimani's home on July 30, taking him into custody. During the search, authorities found a Glock handgun with the same caliber of ammunition as the casing recovered at the crime scene, along with clothing that matched what the shooter was wearing in the surveillance videos. The King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office charged Edward Kimani with first-degree murder with a firearm enhancement. Prosecutors alleged the killing was a premeditated ambush, stating that Kimani had lain in wait for his classmate. A judge set his bail at $5 million, and he was booked into the King County Jail.
