A 49-year-old man died Aug. 12 in a Kent vehicle crash just eight months after his early release from state prison after a 1994 first-degree murder conviction for killing a Sumner woman when he was just 18.
Jason Lee Allison died from multiple blunt force injuries in a vehicle crash at South 272nd Street and 47th Place South, according to the Aug. 14 King County Medical Examiner’s Office report. The streets have a Kent address but are in unincorporated King County, outside of the city limits.
King County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the crash. A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said the crash is still under investigation so they have no additional information to share about the crash, according to a Friday, Aug. 15 email.
Allison was released in December 2024 from the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen, according to a state Department of Corrections spokesperson, who added that Allison didn’t appear to have been on community supervision after his release.
Allison was convicted of first-degree murder in 1994 for his role in the killing-for-hire of Marietta De La Cruz when Allison was 18 years old, according to a Dec. 4, 2024 article in The News Tribune (Tacoma). Allison had his life without parole sentence reduced Dec. 2, 2024 to 33 years after an exemplary good record during his 30 years at the state prison at Walla Walla and 2024 rulings about teen offenders by the Washington State Supreme Court.
A Sumner woman, then 25, in 1994 hired three men, including Allison, to kill her mother, De La Cruz, because she believed she might inherit as much as $1.4 million after her mother’s death as the sole heir to her mother’s estate, according to a 1994 article in The Seattle Times. The other two men were 21 at the time of the incident. Each of the three men were offered from $25,000 to $50,000.
Dela Cruz, 59, a widow and leader of the Filipino community in Sumner, was shot to death in her home the night of March 14 or early March 15 in 1994.
Court documents claim that Allison and another man broke into De La Cruz’s home while a third man remained outside to drive the getaway car, according to The Seattle Times. Investigators were not sure who was the trigger man. Police initially thought Dela Cruz was killed during a burglary. But later investigation suggested the burglary was merely a cover-up for a hired killing, prosecutors said.
The Kent Reporter reached out to the attorney who represented Allison during his resentencing last year but has not yet heard back.
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