Amy Dyke, 48, a White/Caucasian woman, was shot just before 2 a.m. on July 27, 2023, as she rode in the front passenger seat of a car leaving the Phoenix Court Apartments area on Kent’s East Hill. A friend driving the car called 911 while trying to get help, and officers located the vehicle about a mile from the scene after the caller reported they were performing CPR.
Police determined the shooting happened near the 11100 block of SE 240th Street, across from a preschool, and said early on that it did not appear to be random. Paramedics rushed Dyke to Harborview Medical Center with life-threatening injuries, including a gunshot wound to the head. She died the next day, and the King County Medical Examiner ruled the manner of death a homicide caused by multiple gunshot wounds.
The violence was extreme. According to later charging documents summarized by local reporters, as many as 58 rounds from semi-automatic pistols were fired at the car as it pulled out by the Guidepost Montessori school next to the apartment complex. Early public bulletins and news reports described multiple suspects aged roughly 17 to 25 and noted that officers were searching for at least three to four people seen fleeing.
For months, investigators pursued leads around the Phoenix Court Apartments and nearby businesses. Surveillance footage from a McDonald’s adjacent to the complex captured three men carrying food up the driveway shortly before the ambush. In December 2024, a witness who knew the men came forward and identified them from the stills, giving detectives the breakthrough they needed.
On December 23, 2024, King County prosecutors charged three suspects—Jaiquane Sherrod Wheeler, Dwight Harris, and Artavious Zyshun Magee—with first-degree murder in Dyke’s killing, and also with unlawful possession of a firearm based on prior convictions. Wheeler and Harris pleaded not guilty on January 6, 2025; proceedings for Magee were continued at his attorney’s request. Prosecutors have said all three have violent criminal histories, and reporting on the charging papers details that each has been accused or convicted in separate deadly crimes in 1994 or 2023. As of those filings, all three men were in custody.
The picture of the night remains stark: Dyke, a Maple Valley mother of three, was targeted as she left a visit with friends, struck multiple times, and succumbed a day later despite emergency aid. Community appeals, including a fundraiser organized by her daughter that described the timeline of the shooting and her being pronounced brain-dead on July 28, helped keep the case in the public eye until arrests and charges followed.
