Suspect charged with murder, animal cruelty in fatal carjacking of 80-year-old dog walker

To receive free real-time news alerts directly to your inbox, sign up for our news emails

Sign up for our free news emails

Sign up for our free news emails

King County prosecutors filed charges Friday against a man they say forced his way into a vehicle occupied by an 80-year-old Seattle dog walker, ran her over, killing her, and then stabbed her dog to death.

Jahmed Kamal Haynes, 48, was charged with first-degree murder, second-degree assault and first-degree animal cruelty, according to a court filing. Prosecutors asked that he be held in jail without bail, and the judge agreed. Haynes is scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 5.

It is not yet known whether Haynes had an attorney or whether one would be assigned to him by the King County Public Defender’s Office. Authorities say they do not believe Haynes knew Dalton.

Ruth Dalton was parked on the side of the road in Seattle’s Madison Valley neighborhood around 10 a.m. Tuesday when Haynes got into the passenger side, prosecutors said. Dalton began to drive away as Haynes tried to take control of the vehicle, they said. He pushed her off the road, backed into several parked cars before running over her as he fled the scene, prosecutors said.

Several witnesses tried to intervene, one carrying a bat or stick, but Haynes threatened them with a knife, prosecutors said. After he left, witnesses tried to save his life, but Dalton died at the scene.

After leaving the neighborhood, Haynes stabbed Dalton’s dog to death in a park, prosecutors said.

“The sheer brutality of the defendant’s actions that morning was demonstrated only by the way he disposed of evidence of his crimes: by throwing Dalton’s dog into a recycling bin and destroying Dalton’s phone,” Senior Assistant District Attorney Brent Kling said in his request for detention without bail.

Seattle police identified the suspect after someone reported a man was hurting a dog in the park. Officers responded and found Dalton’s car nearby and were able to run fingerprints on his cellphone, Seattle Deputy Police Chief Eric Barden said at a news conference Wednesday.

When police arrested Haynes near his home, he was carrying a knife with blood on it and the keys to Dalton’s Subaru, Barden said.

Haynes has a lengthy and violent criminal history, prosecutors argued when they asked that he be held without bail.

In 1993, he was convicted of vehicular manslaughter for driving recklessly on Seattle streets and on a sidewalk, crashing into several vehicles and killing one driver. After serving his sentence, he was convicted in 1999 of robbing a Safeway store with an air pistol and stealing a vehicle, Kling said.

While in prison for those crimes, he attacked two corrections officers in 2003 using a 12-inch (30.5-centimeter) piece of metal that had been sharpened to a blunt point, Kling said.

“In short, the level of violence that the defendant has shown himself capable of, not only on the day the crimes now charged were committed, but over the past 30 years, demonstrates a propensity for violence that conclusively shows that he constitutes a danger to the community,” Kling said.

The judge agreed.