Accused teenager knew son of victim
A 15-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting a White Center man after he caught the boy and two other teens burglarizing his house last week had been in the home before as a guest of the victim’s teenage son.
Thao Nguyen, Craig Hoffman’s longtime girlfriend and the mother of his youngest child, said Friday the suspect had previously visited one of Hoffman’s teenagers, although she wouldn’t characterize the boy as a friend.
Nguyen said she had never met the boy but was told by one of Hoffman’s three children from a previous relationship that the boy had been to the house before the shooting when the parents weren’t home. Court papers charging the three teens with Hoffman’s slaying also indicate the alleged shooter had “been at the Hoffman house before.”
The 15-year-old, who prosecutors said fired the fatal gunshots, was charged in juvenile court Wednesday with first-degree murder. Two other boys, ages 15 and 14, were charged with second-degree murder.
Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said the teens will appear before a juvenile-court judge next month to determine whether their charges will be moved to adult court.
The Seattle Times generally does not name juvenile suspects unless they are charged as adults.
According to charging papers, the teens saw Hoffman, 46, drive away from his home on the morning of Oct. 19. The teen who had been to Hoffman’s house before entered the home through an open garage and let the other two boys in through the front door, charging papers say.
The teens were rifling through the home when Hoffman returned, court documents allege.
Nguyen said Hoffman, a contractor, had returned to the house after dropping his daughter off at school to switch his car for a work van and meet an employee who needed a ride to the job, Nguyen said.
Hoffman opened the front door and the boys raced out of the house with stolen items in hand, court documents allege.
“We’d talked about it and said that if we were ever robbed we would let it go,” Nguyen said. “It’s only things. They can be replaced. But he could be hard-headed.”
“He didn’t work that hard to build and maintain that home just to let somebody come in and take it,” said a friend of Nguyen’s who was visiting her on Friday.
A neighbor told Nguyen that Hoffman was running after the boys as they fled, hollering at them to leave his stuff.
The 15-year-old shooter then turned and fired at Hoffman before they escaped.
Search dogs led police to an apartment complex a few blocks from Hoffman’s home, where they found a backpack with his laptop and other items from the home, court documents allege.
Police arrested two of the boys when they came to retrieve the backpack. Police tracked down the third boy and arrested him at his home, court documents indicate.
Family members at the suspects’ homes declined to comment, but a woman who described herself as friend of one boy’s family described him as a “wonderful” kid.
Two of the teens previously had been charged with burglary and criminal trespass, prosecutors said.
Nguyen, an accountant who met Hoffman 11 years ago when she was just out of college and he was a single father with three young children, said she hopes the boys are prosecuted as adults. The couple had one child together.
“He was a very good man. He loved children and he treated me like royalty,” she said. “He did the dishes, the laundry. He cooked, he cleaned. He took the kids on field trips and he got up every morning to iron my clothes.
“He spoiled me and I took things for granted,” she said. “I miss him so much already.”
Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com