Robert Fleeks Jr. had just taken a bite of pizza while behind the wheel of his gold Chevy Tahoe when he was shot three times to the left side of his head and neck on a Wednesday evening in September, according to King County prosecutors.
Mortally wounded Sept. 17 in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, Fleeks, 26, died later that night at Harborview Medical Center.
Seattle police arrested De'Andre Todd, 27, after he was spotted leaving his girlfriend's Burien apartment earlier this week; the Seattle resident was charged Thursday with second-degree murder in Fleeks' killing, charging papers say.
The victim had not drawn a weapon and posed no threat to the defendant," Senior Deputy Prosecutor Lauren Burke wrote in the charges.
The charging documents don't indicate a possible motive. The only apparent connection between the men is that Fleeks was the cousin of the man Todd's ex-girlfriend is currently dating, and both were driving vehicles registered to her.
Witnesses at the scene on 10th Avenue, just north of East Pike Street, didn't see what led up to the shooting but told Seattle police officers they heard four gunshots and said four people in all black clothing were associated with a black car parked at a nearby lot, the charges say. Three .45 caliber casings were found in the street, and one was located on the sidewalk.
Using video surveillance footage from nearby businesses, police pieced together nearly the entire sequence of events, starting with Fleeks' arrival in the area a little after 9 p.m., the charges say. He parked, went into a pizza parlor, made a purchase and left less than 10 minutes later.
Outside a nearby restaurant, he exchanged a "quasi-handshake" with a male and said something like, "we good," and continued walking west "at an unhurried pace," the charges say, noting Fleeks didn't look alarmed, though he did look back a couple of times.
After Fleeks returned to his Tahoe and got inside, a group of four males — including the one Fleeks had briefly greeted — were seen walking west on 10th Avenue. Something indistinguishable was said, and Fleeks stopped the Tahoe in the street, according to the charges.
A man later identified as Todd approached the Tahoe with the three others behind him, and gunshots rang out 25 seconds later, the charges say. The four males ran back to the black car in a nearby parking lot and took off east on Pike. Video showed the car, which turned out to be a Dodge Durango, was parked in the lot for about an hour before the shooting and captured its license plate number.
Police learned the Tahoe and Durango were registered to the same woman. She told police she sold the Tahoe to her friend "Rob" and that her ex-boyfriend and father of her child, Todd, had been driving the Durango "for quite some time, charging papers say.
After Todd's arrest in Burien on Monday, police searched his girlfriend's apartment and found a puffy jacket and black and white sneakers that were consistent with the jacket and shoes worn by the shooter in the surveillance footage, the charges say. They also found a video on his girlfriend's phone of the two of them that was recorded in the parking lot eight minutes before Fleeks was shot, according to the charges.
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