In the early morning hours of November 2, 2017, the life of 31-year-old Shon-Tiea Marie Ann Brister, a Black / African American female, was tragically cut short on a street in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. Just after midnight, near the intersection of 5th Avenue and Battery Street, a dispute between two groups of people escalated into deadly violence. Witnesses reported a disturbance followed by the sound of gunshots.
When police arrived at the scene around 12:18 a.m., they discovered three people with gunshot wounds.
Shon-Tiea Marie Ann Brister and a man named Raymond Myles Jr., 39, were pronounced dead at the scene, both having suffered from multiple gunshot wounds. A third individual was also injured in the shooting but survived. The events that led to the fatal encounter began to unfold earlier that evening. The surviving victim later told investigators that the shooting was an act of "payback" for a theft allegedly committed by Brister's boyfriend against one of the suspects. That night, Brister had called Myles for a ride after she was allegedly assaulted by two men. When Myles and the third individual went to pick her up, they were ambushed as they approached Myles' car. The two men reappeared and opened fire on the group.
The investigation into the double homicide led Seattle police to identify two suspects: Jeremy J. Simmons, 35, and Nyagah Baker-Williams, 27. Detectives found spent shell casings of two different calibers at the scene, indicating multiple shooters. In December 2017, U.S. Marshals apprehended Jeremy J. Simmons near the Mexican border in San Diego, California. He was subsequently charged with two counts of first-degree murder, first-degree assault, and illegal firearm possession.
In March 2018, prosecutors also charged Nyagah Baker-Williams with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Brister and Myles. At the time the charges were filed, Baker-Williams remained at large, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. The charges against both men brought some measure of progress in the quest for justice for Shon-Tiea Marie Ann Brister and Raymond Myles Jr., whose lives were violently ended in an act of retaliatory violence.
