21-year-old gets 9 years in prison for shooting into crowd at downtown Spokane bar

A 21-year-old was sentenced to a little more than nine years in prison on Monday in Spokane County Superior Court after shooting into a crowd of people outside of a downtown bar last summer.

Loren J.T. Bigleggins pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including assault, malicious mischief and possession of a firearm.

According to a probable cause affidavit, Bigleggins shot into a crowd of people outside Crave, a downtown Spokane bar. Two people were injured, including a 26-year-old man and a teenager who had snuck out with a friend during a sleepover, court documents said. Neither had life-threatening injuries, police said at the time.

The shooting stemmed from an argument between two groups who were in line to get into the bar that night, court documents said. Some 20 to 25 people were present outside of the bar when Bigleggins fired multiple rounds. Police recovered seven 9 mm shell casings at the scene.

According to court documents, Bigleggins belonged to the 5th Street gang, which has been feuding with another group, the Insane Swavii Crips. The two people who were shot by Bigleggins were said to have had “beef” with him, although they were not necessarily part of a rival gang, according to Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Preston McCollam.

The original charges were much more serious, and additional assault charges had also been possible, McCollam said.

“There could have been many, many more victims in that area,” he said. “This is quite a benefit the defendant is getting out of this plea.”

Bigleggins has three other felony convictions, including criminal mischief with a deadly weapon, which prohibits him from possessing a firearm.

According to McCollam, Bigleggins is said to have been a close associate, or “little homie,” of Diandre Johnson, 26, who was sentenced to 31 years in prison after pleading guilty to the murder of Stevie Cavitt, 24.

Bigleggins himself was shot while trying to rob Mekhi Fletcher, a juvenile at the time, in February 2021 at Sullivan Park in Spokane Valley under the pretext of purchasing a firearm, court documents said.

The “young people shooting young people” in gang violence throughout Spokane has reached “pandemic proportions,” Judge Raymond F. Clary said in an address to Bigleggins on Monday.

“It is really, deeply troubling that you would just randomly shoot into a group and shoot bystanders,” Clary said.

Bigleggins’s defense attorney Annie Wasilewski said his prison sentence is a “wake-up call.”

“He is here in front of the court today to take responsibility for making a poor choice,” she said. “We talked a lot about how he got to that point how he was trying to impress the crowd he was running with.”

Bigleggins pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree assault, one count each of third-degree assault, first-degree malicious mischief and possession of a stolen firearm. He will remain in community custody for 18 months after his release. He did not make a statement to the court.

“Thankfully, no one was seriously injured or killed,” McCollam said. “He’s gonna have 109.5 months to think about it.”