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Everywhere she goes, Heather Tipke looks for him. The man with glasses and short, “military-style hair,” as the few people who saw her brother’s killer have described him.
It’s been nearly five months since William O. “Billy” Floyd, 22, was stabbed to death in a central Spokane parking lot.
His assailant hasn’t been found, but his family remains hopeful. “We’re never going to give up,” said Tipke, 25. “As long as my heart keeps beating, I’ll keep looking.”
Floyd (right) died Aug. 15 in the parking lot of the Spokane Dance Company at 902 W. Indiana Ave. He’d been stabbed in the heart.
He and a friend were walking to an apartment to get something to eat after a night of playing video games and drinking alcohol when they encountered a man at Shannon Avenue and Lincoln Street.
Ge’d been walking east from Monroe and handed Floyd a cigarette when they asked, police said. But the 2 a.m. encounter quickly turned contentious, and Floyd soon stumbled to the ground with a knife wound to the heart.
He died shortly after medics found him almost unconscious and barely breathing.
The assailant ran northeast toward Shannon Avenue and has never been identified.
Floyd’s relatives are convinced he’s still in Spokane. They say someone has been ripping down police sketches of the man posted throughout the city. (The sketch is shown at left.)
They wonder: Could it be the killer? Or someone covering for him?
Police haven’t ruled it out. “I’m convinced someone knows who it is and they’re protecting him,” said Spokane police Detective Terry Ferguson.
Read the rest of my story here
Read past coverage here.
Reporter Meghann Cuniff writes about public safety news from the Inland Northwest and beyond.
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davepartovi on January 04 at 12:12 p.m.
Does anybody else see a shocking similarity between the suspect in Floyd’s stabbing and Tony E. Dawson who “Acted like Jesse James” in the immediately proceeding blog post? I mean, it’s not just the shape of the face & cut of the hair but also the shape of the lips, nose, eyebrows and eyes.
MeghannC on January 05 at 12:34 a.m.
I’ve got a lot of calls and emails about that. I put in a call to the major crimes unit to see if they’ve looked into it. Someone who knows Dawson did post on another story that he’s never worn prescription glasses.