Allen Ivanov to Get Life in Prison for Killing 3 at Mukilteo Party

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The 20-year-old college student whose jealous rage drove him to storm a Mukilteo house party in July and kill three former high-school schoolmates is expected to be sentenced Thursday morning to life in prison without the possibility of release.

Allen Ivanov’s sentence was preordained after he pleaded guilty last month to three counts of aggravated first-degree murder as well as two counts of attempted first-degree murder. By doing so, he avoided a possible death sentence had he been convicted at trial.

Snohomish County Prosecutor Mark Roe was weighing whether to seek the death penalty when Ivanov pleaded guilty on Dec. 19. Under state law, the only possible sentences for aggravated murder is life in prison or death.

“There’s no real issue about what the sentence will be,” Ivanov’s attorney, Tim Leary, said Wednesday.

Leary said Ivanov has not indicated whether he will speak at his sentencing, but the lawyer expects “he will have something to say.”

Police and prosecutors said Ivanov was angry that his former girlfriend, Anna Bui, 19, had rebuffed his efforts to reconcile when he purchased a Ruger AR-15 semi-automatic rifle about a week before the shootings, according to court documents. Bui and Ivanov were students at the University of Washington Bothell.

On the night of July 29, Ivanov drove to a home in the Chennault Beach neighborhood of Mukilteo, where Bui was attending a gathering of friends, and parked outside, the documents say. He walked up to the home and saw his ex-girlfriend at the party.

Ivanov then returned to his car to study the owner’s manual for his newly purchased AR-15, police wrote in the documents.

Two hours passed before he walked back to the home just after midnight and opened fire while he was outside, the documents say.

Will Kramer, 18, who was wounded in the shooting, told his father he was sitting around a backyard firepit with three friends when gunfire broke out. Two of his friends, Jake Long and Jordan Ebner, both 19, were killed.

Ivanov then walked into the house through a side door, found Bui and shot her twice.

All four victims were recent graduates of Kamiak High School, which Ivanov also attended.

Ivanov went upstairs and onto the balcony off the master bedroom and fired at two more people in the driveway. “He then went up on the roof and realized his magazine was empty,” so returned to his car and drove away.

Ivanov was arrested by State Patrol troopers about 90 minutes later on Interstate 5 near Chehalis, about 100 miles away.

After his arrest, “Ivanov stated that everything that went on tonight was about a girl,” the documents allege.

In court pleadings filed last month, Ivanov’s attorneys said evidence suggests the 20-year-old has been living with untreated neurological problems and potential mental illness. Preliminary testing suggests Ivanov has the brain development of somebody years younger, defense attorney Walter Peale wrote in the court papers.