In the early morning hours of January 11, 2016, a burst of gunfire shattered the quiet of a Tacoma, Washington neighborhood, leaving 18-year-old Dylan Oman, a White / Caucasian male, dead. The incident, which unfolded around 3 a.m. in the parking lot of an apartment complex at Brown's Point Boulevard and 38th Avenue Northeast, was described as a gun battle that erupted following an apparent argument.
The scene was littered with shell casings, and a small SUV was marked with several bullet holes.
Friends of the former Stadium High School student tell a different story of the events that led to his death. They claim Oman was not a participant in the dispute but rather a bystander who had accompanied them to help a friend rescue a family member from what they described as a dangerous group of people. According to his friends, as they approached a car in the parking lot, a gunman opened fire on the group, and Oman was struck by bullets intended for others. One of his friends stated that he tried to intervene by getting into the gunman's car and was also fired upon, but escaped unharmed. As the suspect drove away, another of Oman's friends, who was legally armed, reportedly fired a full clip at the departing vehicle.
In the days following the shooting, law enforcement officials questioned several individuals, but no immediate arrests were made in connection with Oman's death. The investigation eventually identified the shooter as 19-year-old Jeffrey McLaren. However, the Pierce County prosecutor's office determined that McLaren had acted in self-defense and, as a result, he was not charged with any crime related to the shooting of Dylan Oman. The rationale for this decision was based on evidence suggesting that Oman had attempted to shoot McLaren in what was described as an "ambush-style attack," and that McLaren had fired first in response to this threat.
The story took another dark turn when, five weeks later, Jeffrey McLaren himself was found shot to death in Federal Way. Investigators later announced that they believed McLaren's murder was connected to a series of three other unsolved homicides that occurred in a 48-hour period in May 2016. While authorities have a suspect in custody on an unrelated charge whom they believe is responsible for the deaths of McLaren and the other three victims, no arrests have been made specifically for the murder of Dylan Oman, as the case was closed with the self-defense ruling.
