Fatal shooting in East Central was a gunfight, not drive-by shooting, court records say

Spokane police say the 35-year-old victim in the April 28 fatal East Central shooting exchanged rounds of gunfire with an unidentified shooter before collapsing near a porch.

No arrests have been made, although detectives suspect the shooter lives in the apartment where Jason Allison was found dead near a handgun and pool of blood, according to investigative reports filed in Spokane County Superior Court.

According to a search warrant, Det. Randy Lesser watched a surveillance video that showed a man who appeared to be Allison standing in the front yard at 3104 E. Fifth Ave. and shooting toward the front door/porch area of the unit on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiske Street “multiple times” before he collapsed.

The Spokane County Medical Examiner ruled Allison died of “multiple gunshot wounds.”

The video also showed Allison and another man circling the unit several times before the shots broke out.

Police talked to a woman who lives in the unit; its porch was riddled with bullets. She told them she was home sometime before 11 p.m. when two men knocked on her back door. Court records say one of them tried to force his way inside, but she was able to push him away.

She told police she saw them both walk north, toward Fiske and Fifth, where they made contact with two more people. All of the sudden, she said, she saw one person “reaching for a gun,” which is when she left her bedroom. She heard four gunshots but “did not see the shooting.”

A pair of surveillance videos, however, seemed to contradict parts of her story, while confirming others. Lesser wrote that videos captured what appeared to be two men – one of them believed to be Allison, the other an unidentified “taller man with dark clothing” – approach the woman’s back door, but then moments later head north along Fiske toward Fifth.

All the while, a car and a pickup truck circled the apartment complex, at times stopping along Fifth, Fiske and Greene Street to the east.

Surveillance video shows the two men talking with someone inside the pickup truck near the Fiske and Fifth intersection, records say.

They then moved back toward the front porch area of the apartment, which is when the “taller male with dark clothing appears to see something that concerns him.” The man ran from the area, but Allison appeared to “stand almost directly in front of the concrete porch area” with a handgun drawn.

Records say Allison fired several rounds toward the front door and then moved outside of the camera’s frame. The surveillance camera, according to the warrant, was at a home on the opposite side of the street and was not able to see the porch.

The taller man then re-entered the frame, running west across the yard, then south on Fiske. He re-entered the frame again, court records say, and ran northbound on Fiske, then westbound on Fifth, where he found the pickup truck.

Several neighbors told The Spokesman-Review they heard a series of gunshots before a car or truck sped away. They assumed the shooting was a drive-by and drug related.

Friends and family of Allison, meanwhile, contend he had no businesses being in East Central at that time of night. Allison’s boss at commercial roofing business Icon Corporation in Post Falls, said Allison was bowling with coworkers in North Idaho an hour before he was shot and killed.