{"id":15972,"date":"2010-12-21T23:25:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-22T07:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiken.wpengine.com\/news\/following-chase-with-k-9-unit-kent-police-make-arrest-in-devin-topps-murder\/"},"modified":"2016-10-22T16:35:30","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T23:35:30","slug":"following-chase-with-k-9-unit-kent-police-make-arrest-in-devin-topps-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/following-chase-with-k-9-unit-kent-police-make-arrest-in-devin-topps-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"Following chase with K-9 unit, Kent Police make arrest in Devin Topps murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kent Police have made an arrest in the Oct. 31 shooting death of Kentridge High School athletic standout Devin Topps<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Police took a 20-year-old Auburn man into custody Tuesday evening for investigation of first-degree murder after he was tracked down at a SeaTac 7-Eleven store at South 194th Street and Pacific Highway South.<\/p>\n

The arrest culminated an early evening cat-and-mouse surveillance effort by police, according to a Kent Police media release.<\/p>\n

Working with information developed by Kent detectives, undercover officers went to the Kings Arms Motel in Des Moines on a tip that evidence of the crime would be located there.<\/p>\n

Detectives identified and followed two cars associated to the crime leaving the area. One of those cars was stopped a short time later without incident. When detectives attempted to stop the second car, the driver sped into a nearby residential neighborhood before abandoning the vehicle.<\/p>\n

Police surrounded the area and while searching for the vehicle’s two occupants, saw another car driving away quickly. When they tried to stop that car, officers saw a passenger jump out and run away.<\/p>\n

A Kent Police K-9 team was called in to assist. It was during that search that an detective driving through the area noticed a man crossing a parking lot a short distance away. That man, wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, was contacted and eventually identified as the suspect.<\/p>\n

The man is being held in the Kent city jail. Bail was set Wednesday at $1.5 million. He has an extensive criminal history, according to police. Investigators have not released his name.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur detectives have been working on this senseless murder without rest,” said Kent Police Chief Steve Strachan. “It\u2019s good to finally have a suspect in jail and see this case moving forward toward prosecution.”<\/p>\n

King County prosecutors are expected to file formal charges against the man Thursday.<\/p>\n

The arrest follows months of local anguish, and policework, in the shooting death of Topps, 18, who had signed a letter of intent to play football for Eastern Washington University. He didn’t play for the school, due to grades.<\/p>\n

According to police reports, Topps had gotten into a scuffle Oct. 31 with a group of people outside of a house party in Kent.<\/p>\n

Topps was shot in the back, and managed to drag himself back to his truck parked nearby, where he collapsed. Responding emergency crews were unable to revive him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kent Police have made an arrest in the Oct. 31 shooting death of Kentridge High School athletic standout Devin Topps.
\nPolice took a 20-year-old Auburn man into custody Tuesday evening for investigation of first-degree murder after he was tracked down at a SeaTac 7-Eleven store at South 194th Street and Pacific Highway South.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":15973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15972"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}