The Pierce County Sheriff's Office is investigating a homicide in Puyallup after a man was found dead inside a home early Wednesday morning. Deputies spent hours at the scene gathering evidence as they worked to understand what led to the deadly violence.
According to the Sheriff's Office, deputies were called to the home on Woodland Avenue East just after 2:30 in the morning. When they went inside, they found a man who was dead, turning the call into a homicide investigation.
Investigators say the early evidence points to a violent confrontation inside the house. It looks like some kind of violent fight started in a downstairs bedroom before eventually extending outside of the home, leaving a trail for detectives to piece together.
As they examined the scene, deputies came to believe the case was not random. It appears to involve related family members, and authorities described it as what looks like a targeted attack on related family members rather than a threat aimed at the wider neighborhood.
Even so, officials were careful about the broader risk. They said the apparent targeting of family members does not necessarily mean that other people could be in danger, while acknowledging there was still a great deal they did not yet know about the case.
The search has since centered on a named suspect. Authorities identified the man they are looking for as Hayes McLeod, described as twenty-four years old, five feet eight inches tall and around 115 pounds, and said he was believed to be driving a silver Toyota 4Runner. His whereabouts and his motive remained unknown as the manhunt got underway.
The Puyallup killing was one of two homicide investigations that Pierce County agencies were working early Wednesday, alongside a separate scene in nearby Tacoma. Investigators handling the Puyallup case linked the two, saying the two men killed that morning were from the same family unit, and released the suspect information as the search widened beyond a single neighborhood.
The search came to an end the following day. The Pierce County Sheriff's Office said Hayes McLeod was located with the help of flock cameras and tracked to Lewis County early in the morning, and was later shot and killed by police in Seaside, Oregon, a smaller community on the Oregon coast. No officers were hurt in the encounter, and body camera video released by the Pierce County Sheriff's Office documented the search that led to him.