A 36-year-old man faces a second-degree assault charge for reportedly firing at a man and a woman in their car on Kent’s East Hill after he didn’t receive payment for a drug deal.
Kent Wayne Perdue II remained in custody Monday, Nov. 8 at the King County Correctional Facility in Seattle with bail set at $750,000, according to county jail records. Perdue was charged Oct. 25, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. He was also charged with unlawful possession of a firearm because of previous felony convictions. Perdue pleaded not guilty to both charges on Nov. 8.
At about 6 a.m. on Oct. 6 officers responded to a 911 call about a drive-by shooting on Southeast 256th Street just east of 116th Avenue Southeast, according to court documents. The caller said she was in a red Volkswagen Beetle and the suspect was following behind them in a blue Dodge sedan.
Officers located the Beetle near downtown. The occupants were not injured but officers found a bullet hole in the driver side rear quarter panel. Officers found a bullet inside a backpack and items inside apparently stopped the bullet from hitting the woman in her rib cage while she was in the back seat.
The driver knew the shooter and told police he first shot at them while parked at a house in the 27800 block of 129th Place in Kent. He said he owed the man about $600 for fentanyl pills he bought a week prior.
As he sat in his car outside the house, Perdue reportedly came out of his friend’s house and yelled that the man owed him money. He then fired one round toward the vehicle. He drove away and Perdue reportedly followed him and fired more shots.
On Oct. 20, after reviewing cellphone records that reportedly put Perdue in the area of the shooting, Kent detectives and Valley SWAT served a search warrant on Perdue’s apartment in Des Moines. Police took him into custody and found him with $2,770 dollars in cash and an Iphone that matched the cellphone number they had used to track his locations during the shooting.
Perdue told detectives that he didn’t shoot at anybody the day of the incident and that he had no drugs or guns in his apartment.
But detectives found four pistols, fentanyl pills, meth, cocaine and heroin inside the apartment. One of the guns was reported stolen out of Enumclaw.
Perdue is a four-time convicted felon with two prior convictions for first-degree armed robbery, according to charging papers.
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