Aidan Schmidt was a 21-year-old White/Caucasian man whose life ended in a shooting along Tacoma’s Scott Pierson Trail during the early morning hours of July 20, 2024. At approximately 1:21 a.m., Tacoma police were dispatched to the trail near the 1900 block of South Mullen Street after a report that someone had been shot. Schmidt had been riding a motorcycle on the trail when gunfire erupted.
Officers found him lying on his back on a small embankment and attempted life-saving measures until Tacoma Fire Department personnel arrived, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. The Pierce County Medical Examiner later determined that he died from gunshot wounds to the chest and arm and ruled the death a homicide.
The shooting occurred near a pedestrian underpass and an area where members of Tacoma’s transient community were living. Prosecutors later said Schmidt had been part of that community but had recently been moving toward more stable housing and employment. He had purchased a motorcycle and was known to ride it through the encampment. After the shooting, his motorcycle was not left where he had fallen. Investigators learned that an individual known by the nickname “K2” moved the motorcycle up the trail and away from the immediate crime scene before police recovered it north of South 19th Street.
For more than two months, no arrest was announced. Investigators eventually focused on Shane Joseph Freeman, who was known in the area by the nickname “Shaggy.” According to prosecutors, there had been an ongoing conflict between Schmidt and Freeman that began over money and developed into repeated confrontations. Witnesses reported that Schmidt had beaten Freeman during an altercation before the killing, and investigators found messages on Schmidt’s phone indicating that he was concerned Freeman might shoot him. Three days before his death, Schmidt reportedly told someone by text that he had obtained a firearm to protect himself because he feared “Shaggy” would shoot him on sight.
A major break came on October 3, 2024, when a woman familiar with Schmidt, Freeman and others in the area spoke with detectives. She alleged that Freeman had admitted shooting Schmidt. According to the charging allegations, Freeman supposedly told her that he had been beneath a tunnel when he heard Schmidt approaching on the motorcycle and fired before Schmidt could draw his own weapon. Freeman was located the following evening, October 4, in a tent in Tacoma’s North End and taken into custody. Police found a loaded 9 mm handgun in the tent, and investigators initially considered whether it could have been the murder weapon. Freeman denied involvement and denied being present when the shooting occurred.
Pierce County prosecutors charged Freeman with first-degree murder and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. A not-guilty plea was entered at his arraignment, and bail was initially set at $1.5 million. The prosecution’s theory was that the killing was retaliation arising from the continuing confrontations between Freeman and Schmidt. Freeman’s previous felony record also prohibited him from legally possessing a firearm, forming the basis of the separate weapons charge.
As the case moved toward trial, however, significant weaknesses emerged in the evidence against Freeman. No eyewitness ultimately identified him as the person who fired the fatal shots, and investigators had no physical evidence placing him at the shooting scene. The 9 mm handgun seized when he was arrested was of the same caliber as the firearm investigators believed had been used in the killing, but subsequent forensic testing showed that it did not match the shell casing recovered from the crime scene. The prosecution also relied in part on the woman who claimed Freeman had confessed, while the defense argued that the circumstances surrounding that alleged admission made the statement unreliable.
Freeman’s attorneys also presented evidence pointing toward another possible suspect—the individual known as “K2.” The defense argued that Schmidt had a more recent dispute with K2 shortly before the shooting. According to material presented in court, the disagreement involved money K2 allegedly owed Schmidt, and Schmidt had struck K2 with brass knuckles during an altercation days before the homicide. Brass knuckles were found in Schmidt’s possession after the shooting. Several witnesses had reportedly identified K2 as a possible suspect during the investigation, although law enforcement ultimately excluded him. His decision to move Schmidt’s motorcycle away from the shooting scene also became an important issue for the defense. K2 has not been publicly identified because he has not been charged in connection with Schmidt’s death.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Philip Thornton permitted the jury to hear evidence concerning K2 after determining that the defense had established a sufficiently concrete connection between the alternate suspect and the crime to present the theory at trial. Freeman’s trial opened on October 6, 2025. K2 was among the witnesses who testified. Closing arguments concluded October 15, and jurors began deliberating the following morning. After a little more than two and a half hours, the jury returned its verdict on October 16, 2025, finding Freeman not guilty of both murder and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm. The acquittal meant that the only person charged with Schmidt’s killing could no longer be prosecuted again for that murder.
Freeman’s acquittal left the homicide without a conviction and renewed questions about who fired the shots on the Scott Pierson Trail. Reporting following the trial said neither the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office nor Tacoma police had publicly confirmed that the investigation would be reopened to pursue K2 or another suspect. K2 remains uncharged, and the evidence presented at Freeman’s trial established only that the defense had sufficient grounds to raise him as an alternative suspect, not that he had been proven responsible. With Freeman acquitted and no other person publicly charged, responsibility for Aidan Schmidt’s killing remains legally unresolved.
