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A real-estate listing for the high-end apartment building where the alleged homicide took place
NOTE TO NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBERS: Due to a publishing error by me, the author, previous version of this post went out to subscribers, and onto the website, with the entire text of the story in the headline. My apologies for the error!
By Erica C. Barnett
Content warning: Brief description of violent death.
On July 4, the Seattle Police Department released an unusually vague report about an investigation into a death that occurred 10 days earlier in the parking garage of a high-end apartment building on the edge of Green Lake, where monthly rent ranges from around $2,000 to $5,500.
According to the post on SPD’s Blotter blog, officers responded to a car prowl report involving a man “potentially armed with a knife” arrived at the garage, “found this male unconscious” and rendered aid until medics responded and took him to Harborview hospital, where he died two days later.
Upon further investigation, the report continues, officers “determined the owner of the vehicle interrupted the car prowl and confronted the male, and they got into a physical altercation. During the altercation, the man fell unconscious, and the vehicle owner separated from him.”
The report does not provide any details behind the odd phrase “he fell unconscious,” although it notes that man’s death is being investigated as a homicide. (According to the King County Prosecutor’s Office, no charges have been filed.)
Nor does it explain why officers didn’t arrest the vehicle owner for killing the man, whose name was Cameron Lewis Heriford.
It does, however, include a photo showing the tools the man had with him, carefully arrayed on a table in the style police use for displaying evidence associated with a crime, such as guns and cash; they include a credit card, screwdrivers, a crowbar, and a small hatchet. The purpose of the photo is unclear, since the person they belonged to is not accused of any crime and, of course, can no longer be arrested or charged with anything.
Local TV stations ran with the photos and the police department’s narrative, in some cases strongly implying that the man who killed Heriford did so in self-defense.
SPD wouldn’t provide any additional details about the arrest. But a King County Medical Examiner report reveals that Heriford, contrary to SPD’s banal description, didn’t just “fall unconscious” during an “altercation.” He was choked to death, by the still-unnamed owner of the vehicle he was allegedly breaking into. Instead of immediately calling 911 or confronting Heriford nonviolently, as people who had previously reported him to police had done, the apparently enraged vehicle owner strangled him so severely that his breathing stopped, oxygen stopped flowing to his brain, and he later died.
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Why didn’t SPD include this information in their report? Why did they let the man who acknowledged killing Heriford—causing him to “fall unconscious”—walk away? And why did they display Heriford’s thieves’ tools, if not to suggest they were relevant to his death—in a case that, had Heriford been arrested and prosecuted, would lead to a fine and jail, at most?
A spokesperson for SPD declined to answer our questions, telling PubliCola, “The information I posted on the Blotter is all that we are allowed to release at this time.”
Heriford, who was 35 when he died, was relatively well known to Seattle police, who sometimes encountered him when doing “crime prevention efforts” at the encampment under I-5 in Northeast Seattle where he lived, according to one police report. Between October 2022, when court documents show SPD officers first arrested him for an attempted break-in, and his death this year, Heriford was was charged in at least five theft or attempted theft cases, most of those in the garages of apartment buildings like the one where he died. The items Heriford was accused of included suitcases, paddleboards, motorcycles, and cars.
He pled guilty to a domestic violence assault charge in 2009 and was charged with violating a no-contact order in that case several times between 2010 and 2012, but court records indicate he was never charged with another violent crime.
Heriford, who lived in Shoreline and Seattle before he became homeless, had recently started on a trajectory that could have made him significantly less likely to commit property crimes. In February, through a King County Regional Homelessness Authority initiative for resolving encampments on state-owned property, he entered CoLEAD, an intensive shelter and case management program designed for people with significant behavioral health needs and those who are involved in the criminal justice system. (The program is run by Purpose Dignity Action, which also operates the diversion program LEAD). In May, Heriford hit a CoLEAD milestone when he moved into permanent housing.
The next step for Heriford was supposed to be “aftercare”—intensive case management that continues after a person secures a place to live. According to PDA Co-Executive Director for programs, Tara Moss, “Housing is only one need for most of the people who enter CoLEAD; for most, intensive case management may be needed for a long time to address complex challenges in building a life with lawful income, addressing substance use disorder, and undoing the impact of debt, incarceration and trauma in early life. Housing is the beginning, not the end, of the changes needed for most of our participants.”
Unfortunately, Heriford never got the opportunity to make those changes. He died on June 28, four days after the attack.
“the person they belonged to is not accused of any crime”
At the very least, he was trespassing… while carrying tools commonly used for burglary.
Also, WA state law does not impose a ‘duty to retreat’ for a property owner: the vehicle owner had no obligation to ‘back down’ while the trespassing would-be burglar had every obligation to do so as he was trespassing.
Finally, there is no evidence the vehicle owner was ‘enraged’ or otherwise motivated to act with malicious intent. It’s just as likely – if not more likely – that they acted within their rights to confront someone threatening their property, the confrontation escalated when the criminal refused to back down (or perhaps even moved to assault the property owner), and the criminal died as a result of the property owner’s self-defense.
I’m so tired of Seattle slapping the hands of these criminals. Have you ever looked at these encampments? They are filled with bikes, electronics and all kinds of nice stuff that they have stolen from people who work hard to afford those things. As long as we allow them to continually victimize us they will continue to thrive. As far as I am concerned one less piece of shit on the streets. Maybe other criminals should take head that the victims are finally fighting back!
So sad. Why did he do a car prowl? 🙁 It’s so sad when people are SO close….but end up so far. Sigh.
I’m sickened—property is valued more than a human life. This man was flawed, as we all are, but to be murdered over an object…. damn. I’ve been burgled once and my car has been broken into twice but it never made me homicidal. .
Welcome to libertarian Seattle, where property rights outweigh human rights. I keep hearing about Seattle’s progressive values but when you have incidents like this, vigilantes attacking homeless camps, and combined multiyear housing affordability and homelessness crises, I don’t see it. A multi-year crisis is the status quo, normalized. And to me, “progressive” needs more than legal weed and LGBTQ rights…this is a libertarian city, not a progressive one.
it is almost parody the lengths that people will go assume good intent on the part of a repeat burglar armed with a hatchet. A complete lack of imagination how situations can get unsafe very quickly, how people not trained how to handle this still do have a legal right to defend themselves.
Imagining this person has bloodthirsty is just privileged nonsense. It’s sad to see someone die, but you don’t know what happened in that garage and you’ve never been in a physical fight with someone armed with a deadly weapon.
Meanwhile the system of deferrals and no jail time and housing first seemed to work as exactly designed … no notes from your end.
The situation sounds like a repeated criminal had permanent housing and was still going out and committing crime.
Yet: “the person they belonged to is not accused of any crime” — yes they were and the photo provides evidence this man was armed and likely prowling cars.
Why is this person repeatedly committing crime and being released? Eventually this happens: a criminal meets someone who won’t be a victim.
I don’t know what happened in the moment. It is legal by state law to protect your person and your property with proportional use of force. The prowler was armed with a deadly weapon and the other man wasn’t armed.
Wow, such a neat and tidy synposis, but you are wrong in your righteousness. Sickenly, your point of view is shared by too many (George Zimmerman).
Even criminals have the right to live, and be judged for the crimes, and not by vigilantes.
The murderer should have just called 911, and left it to law enforcement. Instead of getting his car jacked, he got to kill someone for attempting to steal his stuff. This is not right!
If the murderer were minding his own business, then got jumped, then he has every right to defend himself.
Did the murderer initiate this altercation because he wanted to kill another, and to get away with it? This better be investigated by police, and not stonewalled. We are not Florida, yet.
Look man, you might not like it, but we don’t need to accommodate crime as long as we act within the law. You have the right to tell someone to stop fucking with your car. There is no legal mandate to hide away, de-escalate, and hope 911 treats this as a priority 1 call (they won’t). I recently called 911 at 3 am and was on hold before speaking to a human for five full minutes.
Do you wonder the bugler didn’t leave? As I said, I have no idea what happened in the moment and you don’t either.
(Nothing like Zimmerman. The person who died was not an innocent unarmed teenager, but an armed serial burglar committing crime. And Zimmerman had a gun.)
And as you point out, I am not waxing about compassion because this news report can easily destroy someone’s life.
… someone who was being victimized by crime that the author bizarrely claims is not relevant to this case. Well, the law says otherwise and photo evidence that the person was actively armed and committing a crime… this communicates they can’t win a murder case. In WA law you have a legal right to protect your person and property and with proportional force. We don’t know all the facts of this case but generally it will be very hard to prove disproportionate force when the assailant had a deadly weapon in his possession.
And sure dude let’s put our best detectives on it,
“Sir why didn’t you let the man with the hatchet go after you had him in a headlock? He has no record of violent crime”