ISSAQUAH, Wash. — A woman has been booked into King County Jail for the alleged murder of her boyfriend.
On Sept. 16, Issaquah Fire crews responded to an automated sprinkler alert for an apartment at Rose Crest on Shangri-la Way NW.
When crews arrived, a maintenance worker pointed them to a bedroom, where a man’s body was found on a bed.
He had head wounds, and his body had been burned, police later said.
The maintenance worker also pointed out a woman at the complex’s playground as someone who lived in the apartment.
While firefighters waited with the woman for police to arrive, she told them that a voice in her head said she needed to shoot her boyfriend in the head and “burn his body” because he was a demon who would kill her, court documents said.
When she was taken into custody, she told police the same thing and said that she stayed up all night before the murder, fearing that her “demon boyfriend” was going to kill her in the night, according to court documents.
According to court docs, she expressed to police that ‘it’s either kill or be killed,’ so she grabbed an axe from her room and snuck into her boyfriend’s room.
She allegedly hit him several times on the head with the axe, and when she heard him moan in pain, she believed it was the demon speaking or leaving her boyfriend’s body.
She then grabbed running alcohol, poured it on her boyfriend, and began trying to set him on fire with a lighter.
Court documents said that after burning the man, she felt that she had listened to the “wrong voice and had done the wrong thing.”
According to court documents, the woman tried cleaning the blood off her boyfriend after that.
She was arrested and booked for first-degree murder.
At the scene, the sister of the suspect told KIRO 7 that her sister had been struggling with mental health and addiction for years. She says her sister had been admitted and then released twice in the last week from mental health facilities.
“I think my biggest disappointment is in our healthcare because she, several times, asked for help and did not get the help that she needed.” The sister said, who asked not to be identified, “Now this was the final cry and an innocent life had to die for it.”
The suspect’s sister has been taking care of the suspect’s children for years. She’s “devastated” about having to tell them about what happened.
“This is going to be very hard for them to hear this news,” her sister said.
She doesn’t know what mental health facilities her sister was admitted to, or why she was let out, but she wants to find out. Her hope is that other people get better care than her sister.
“[My sister] is a beautiful person who would take her shirt off her back for anybody. This was not her, this was a mental illness that could have been addressed.”
She is scheduled for a second appearance hearing on Thursday.
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