Silvano Ruiz-Perez, a 31-year-old Hispanic male, had his life cut short in March of 2019. On the morning of March 24th, a passerby discovered his body in a field at the site of the former Valley 6 Drive-In in Auburn, Washington, and immediately contacted the authorities. The King County Medical Examiner's office later determined that Ruiz-Perez had died the previous day, March 23rd, from a single shotgun wound.
His death was officially ruled a homicide.
Investigators began to piece together the final hours of Ruiz-Perez's life. His family reported that they had last spoken to him in the early morning of March 23rd. He had taken an Uber to the Azteca restaurant in Kent and was planning to get a ride home, but he suddenly stopped answering his phone and responding to text messages. Through their investigation, detectives identified a person of interest, Abbas Salah Zghair, after his vehicle was spotted in surveillance footage at locations that corresponded with Ruiz-Perez's phone records.
The investigation led to the arrest of Zghair, then 24, on April 13, 2019, as he attempted to cross the Canadian border at the Sumas crossing using false identification. Initially, Zghair denied any knowledge of the murder but later admitted to being with Ruiz-Perez on the night of his death. In April 2019, the King County Prosecutor's Office charged Zghair with second-degree murder, alleging that he had shot and killed Ruiz-Perez. Zghair was held on $2.5 million bail. In October 2021, a jury found Abbas Zghair guilty of second-degree murder. However, in a significant turn of events, the Washington State Court of Appeals overturned the murder conviction in November 2023. The court determined that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Zghair was the one who shot Ruiz-Perez or that he knowingly acted as an accomplice. The case was sent back to the King County Superior Court for the dismissal of the conviction.
