The King County Sheriff’s office says 17-year-old John Mugo had been playing with a 9.mm Ruger pistol off and on or several hours at his home in unincorporated Auburn on the night of July 8, 2018 until he pointed the gun at a young friend, pulled the trigger and killed him.

In late October, the King County Prosecutor charged Mugo with one count of first-degree manslaughter and one count of first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, the latter charge stemming from two convictions for first-degree robbery and residential burglary in 2016.

Because first-degree manslaughter is a felony, the prosecutor intends to try Mugo as an adult.

At the time of the shooting, court records say, Mugo was on electronic home monitoring, as a pretrial condition of release for an incident of second-degree assault that occurred on June 27, when he allegedly tried to rob someone of his shoes at knifepoint and cut the guy in the process.

“In the present case, the defendant shot and killed the victim, then attempted to cover up his acts by claiming that the victim shot himself,”Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Castleton Jr. told a Superior Court Judge at Mugo’s bail hearing. “The defendant possessed and used firearms while on electronic home monitoring in his own home and while his parents were home, leading to a young man’s death.

“Given the defendant’s actions, along with his criminal history and current pending matters, it is clear that the defendant poses an extreme danger to the community and warrants bail in the amount of $1 million,” Castleton Jr. told the court.

Here is what happened, according to the Certification for Determination of Probable Cause (CDPC), which King County Sheriff’s Detective James Belford wrote up and forwarded to the prosecutor:

At about 9:40 p.m. on July 8, King County dispatch alerted Sheriff’s deputies to a shooting at Mugo’s home. When deputies got there, Mugo and his father told them one of Mugo’s friends had shot himself in an upstairs bedroom. That’s where deputies found the 17-year-old victim, on his back on an ottoman, not moving and not breathing. On the floor next to his head, according to the CDPC. they found blood, and, next to the victim’s right hand, a silver and black Ruger P94 handgun.

According to the CDPC, medics transported the victim to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, but he died two days later from a single gunshot wound to his left forehead.

According to the CDPC, Mugo’s father told detectives he had just re-entered the house from his backyard that evening when he heard a “pop” and saw his son running down the stairs. According to the CDPC, the younger Mugo directed his father to call 911 because his “brother” had just shot himself.

The younger Mugo told detectives he did not know what had happened. He said because he could not leave home, he had hung out with the victim and a third youth that day. At one point, returning to his room, Mugo told detectives, he heard a pop, and that when he entered the room, he saw his friend on the ottoman “twitching,” with a gun on his chest, according to the CDPC.

According to the CDPC, Mugo told detectives at the scene that the third youth had left earlier in the day, well before the shooting. According to the CDPC, Mugo also denied knowing that the victim had a gun with him, and continued to insist that he had neither touched that gun, nor had there been any other guns in the house at the time.

When detectives later searched the victim’s cellphone, according to the CDPC, they found photos of Mugo, the victim and the third youth, posing with at least three handguns in Mugo’s room that day, and one of the guns appeared to be the Ruger.

Mugo at first denied seeing or touching any guns that day, but finally admitted he may have taken a picture with one of the guns that day. Shown a photo of himself sitting on the window sill, pointing two guns toward the bed, he admitted that the photo had been taken several hours before the shooting, but repeated that he had not been present when the victim was shot.

According to the CDPC, the surgeon at Harborview who had treated the victim told detectives that, based on his 50 years of experience as a neurosurgeon, the gunshot wound did not appear to have been self-inflicted. According to the CDPC, the deputy medical examiner who’d conducted the autopsy ruled the death a homicide.

According to the CDPC, when detectives found and interviewed the third person in the photos, the young man told them that earlier in the day, Mugo had pointed his gun at him and at the victim and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire, and that he and the victim yelled at him for pointing the weapon at them.

According to the CDPC, at about 9:40 p.m.. Mugo again pointed the gun at the third youth, and when he became upset once again, Mugo pointed the gun at the victim and fired one shot into his left forehead. According to the youth, Mug dropped the gun on the bed. said it was accident, and told him as he was leaving that he needed his help to make it look like an accident or suicide. At that point the third person returned home and told his mother what had happened.