Boy May Be Tried As Adult For Role In Violent Break-In

A 15-year-old boy may join James and Tracie McMurtrey in adult court to answer charges that he participated in a violent break-in last week at a Springdale, Wash., home.

The boy, who has no apparent relationship to the McMurtreys, faces a hearing Nov. 4 to determine whether he should face trial as an adult. Until then, he is being held in the Yakima County Juvenile Detention Center on charges of first-degree burglary and second-degree assault as an accomplice.

Stevens County Prosecutor Jerry Wetle said the boy told authorities he had been living with his grandmother in Leavenworth, Wash., and that his father lives in Spokane.

He and the McMurtreys, of Ford, Wash., are accused of bursting into Sonja Howder’s house with a hail of gunfire shortly before midnight on Oct. 14.

Howder, 30, told authorities that James McMurtrey, 49, repeatedly fired a pistol as he ran upstairs to her bedroom, accompanied by his wife and the 15-year-old. No one was hit by the shots.

Then, Howder reported, Tracie McMurtrey, 42, punched her in the face, pulled her hair and kicked her. Howder said her nephew, Richard Johnson, 16, ran upstairs to help her but James McMurtrey pushed him to the floor and fired several shots near his feet.

Wetle said in a court document that Tracie McMurtrey claimed to have broken into the house to get something, which he didn’t identify, that she paid for two weeks earlier.

However, Wetle said Howder told sheriff’s deputies that James McMurtrey called her an obscene name and demanded all her money. The intruders left after she gave them $30, Howder said.

A Spokane tribal police officer stopped the suspects’ car and seized a .22-caliber pistol believed to have been used in the break-in.

Both McMurtreys were charged with first-degree burglary and first-degree robbery. In addition, James McMurtrey was charged with second-degree assault. She is scheduled for trial on Dec. 2; he on Dec. 9.

Both pleaded innocent. She is free on $100,000 bond, but he remains in the county jail.

, DataTimes