A 39-year-old Kent man faces a second-degree murder charge for allegedly shooting a man on Aug. 31 outside of a Motel 6 in SeaTac.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Rodney Candies Wheeler, also faces charges of second-degree assault for shooting and injuring a second man inside the motel and unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Wheeler remains in custody at the King County jail at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent with bail set at $1 million. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Oct. 20 at the RJC, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
King County Sheriff’s Office detectives arrested Wheeler on Tuesday after tracking him down through witnesses, motel video surveillance, cellphone records and two women he had reportedly sold heroin to in a Motel 6 room earlier in the night on Aug. 31, according to charging papers. The motel is at 18900 47th Ave. <\/a>S<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The incident began at about 9:58 p.m. when police were dispatched to reports of shots fired at the motel. Deputies found Justin M. Love, 28, dead in the motel parking lot from a gunshot wound to the chest. Love, of Oregon, was staying at the motel while working construction in the area.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Co-workers of Love told detectives that a man, later identified as Wheeler, had thrown a rock at their window and had done the same thing to them a week prior at the motel. Two of the men left the room to go outside to confront Wheeler, who had climbed a fence to get to his parked vehicle.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The men got into a verbal argument and Love began to climb the fence to get to Wheeler. Wheeler then pulled out a gun and fired a shot that missed the men. He then fired a second shot that hit Love in the chest. Wheeler then got in his vehicle and drove away.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The first shot fired by Wheeler reportedly entered a motel room and struck a man in the back while he stood between two beds in the room. Paramedics transported the man to Valley Medical Center in Renton. He is expected to make a full recovery from the gunshot wound.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Wheeler has a lengthy criminal record, including convictions for fourth-degree assault in 2013, tampering with a witness in 2008, fourth-degree assault in 1999 and several drug charges.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A 39-year-old Kent man faces a second-degree murder charge for allegedly shooting a man on Aug. 31 outside of a Motel 6 in SeaTac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-22502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22502"}],"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\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22502"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}