Kent Police are trying to figure out who stabbed a 47-year-old homeless man to death the night of March 20 in downtown Kent near the Gowe Court senior housing complex.
Michael A. Draman died from multiple sharp force injuries, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“We have confirmed that he was homeless,” said police spokeswoman Melanie Robinson in a Monday email. “Investigators are still working on understanding what the motive was, and are working relentlessly to identify the suspect.”
ElsaMarie Butler lives at Gowe Court and often hears homeless people arguing at an empty field where they gather outside the apartments near the railroad tracks. Several residents heard arguing and a man cry out for help on what turned out to be a fatal night for Draman.
“I heard two yells but I’m so used to hearing arguments that I ignored it,” said Butler in a phone interview.
Butler said homeless people have lived in the area since she moved to the apartments nine years ago.
Another resident heard a man yell, “Help me!” Butler said.
At about 8:41 p.m. on a Monday, patrol units responded to the 500 block of West Gowe Street, just a block from City Hall and the police station, for a welfare check on a man who reportedly yelled for help, said police spokesman Jarod Kasner in an email.
Officers found Draman unresponsive. He died at the scene.
Preliminary information indicated there was an altercation between Draman and someone else, Kasner said. He added the stabbing does not appear to be random.
Butler said she saw a homeless man who acted rather strangely near the railroad tracks just one day before the stabbing.
“He was throwing clothing items around,” she said.
Officers came out and talked to the man, and eventually he walked away.
But the stabbing the next night sticks in Butler’s mind.
“There’s a guy out there who killed someone in my neighborhood,” she said.
Residents are scared because a suspect remains on the loose.
“It’d be comforting to know they had identified and apprehended someone,” Butler said.
Draman’s stabbing is the third homeless killing in the last seven months in Kent.
Detectives are still looking for the man who killed Louisa Campos, 32, and Robert Dias, 50, in shootings on two nights last August at a homeless camp in the 22200 block of 88th Avenue Southeast, just east of Highway 167.
Police said the killings of Campos and Dias were specific to the victims and not a random act. They believe both shootings are linked and by the same man.
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