A 17-year-old Kent teen pleaded not guilty Thursday in King County Superior Court to a first-degree assault charge in connection with the stabbing of a 30-year-old Auburn man Jan. 9 near a Kent convenience store.
The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office decided to charge Michael Vincent Ford as an adult because he is charged with a serious violent crime, according to charging papers.
Ford is in custody at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center jail in Kent in lieu of $250,000 bail.
Juanita Holmes, Ford’s defense attorney, requested Thursday at Ford’s arraignment that Judge Mary Roberts release Ford and that he be placed on electronic monitoring. Holmes said if Ford were released he could live with his grandparents and that he could continue classes at a local technical college. Holmes also said Ford responded in self defense in the assault case.
Roberts denied the request, noting she agreed with prosecutors that Ford should be kept in custody.
According to charging papers, prosecutors requested the $250,000 bail because of Ford’s extensive criminal history, his alleged claims to gang ties, the serious injury of an unarmed man, potential to commit a violent offense if free in the community and that it’s believed he is unlikely appear in court because he faces adult incarceration.
The teen’s prior convictions include taking a motor vehicle (in 2009), minor in possession of alcohol (2008), residential burglary (2007), criminal trespass (2006), possession of weapons capable of producing harm (2006), second-degree burglary (2005) and two convictions of third-degree theft (2005).
“This is a significant amount of criminal history for someone only 17 years old,” prosecutors wrote in the charging papers.
In the Jan. 9 incident, the Auburn man whom Ford is accused of injuring had been stabbed three times in the shoulder, arm and back, said Kent Police Sgt. Bob Burwell in a phone interview Jan. 12. Burwell said paramedics transported the man to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for non-life-threatening injuries and that he has since been released from the hospital.
The man told detectives he was in surgery for seven hours to repair the main artery in his left arm that had been severed because of the stab wound. He said he had partial numbness to his left index finger, left middle finger and left thumb. Doctors told him the surgery took a portion of one of his other veins to repair the artery, and will leave about a 5-inch scar on his arm.
Police responded to a report of a stabbing at about 6:56 a.m. Jan 9 at a convenience store parking lot at the southwest corner of the intersection of West James Street and Washington Avenue North.
Ford, his 16-year-old girlfriend and the Auburn man were in attendance at an all-night party at a condominium about a block west of the convenience store. About 10 or so people were at the party.
Ford allegedly made disparaging remarks at the party and was asked to leave.
The man, who had a nephew at the party, claimed he was walking to the store to get cigarettes when he saw Ford hit his girlfriend in the face in the store’s parking lot.
The man reported to police that he told Ford he couldn’t hit girls and tried to intervene, when he was stabbed.
The man went back to the party and asked to call 911 for help. Two of the partygoers knew Ford because they attend the same technical school.
Police tracked down Ford’s address and arrested him without incident the afternoon of Jan. 9 at his East Hill residence.
Ford told detectives that the Auburn man yelled at him and his girlfriend as they walked down the road to the store from the party. Ford claimed the man took a swing at him and hit him in the face.
Ford said he carried a small pocket knife with him during the incident but he had thrown it away somewhere near the store. He did not admit to stabbing the man.
The girlfriend told detectives that she did not see the Auburn man hit Ford. She said she saw Ford throw away a knife somewhere near the store. Detectives noted that the girl was not very cooperative or forthcoming with information during their interview with her.
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