TUKWILA, Wash. (KOMO) — Prosecutors have charged two men for the murder of a 67-year-old woman who was killed during an attempted robbery in the parking lot of a Costco in January.
According to court filings, Ilyiss Mohamud Abdi, 18, of Burien, and Salman Haji, 19, of Des Moines, face charges of murder in the first degree, robbery in the first degree, and attempted robbery in the first degree.
Charging documents filed in King County Superior Court allege Abdi was driving a stolen Porsche SUV through the parking lot of a Costco in Tukwila, Washington on January 26 with Haji in the passenger seat when the pair spotted the victim, Yuam Ming, and her sister loading groceries into their car.
“Abdi turned the Porsche around and slowly approached the women’s location. As one of the women got into her vehicle’s driver seat, [Haji] jumped from the Porsche and ran up on her. Leaning into her vehicle, he attempted to grab her purse. The woman, [Ming’s sister], fought back and kept hold of her purse while [Ming] leaned over from the passenger seat and attempted to help,” prosecutor Jason D. Brookhyser wrote in charging documents.
Haji then shot Ming in the chest during the struggle over her sister’s purse, the charges allege.
After the shooting, Haji ran back to the Porsche SUV that Abdi was driving and the pair fled the scene, a police report states.
PORSCHE CARJACKED IN SEATTLE
Police allege the Porsche that Abdi and Haji were driving in at the time of the Tukwila Costco murder was taken during a carjacking in Seattle hours earlier.
At 9 a.m. on Jan. 26, Seattle police responded to the intersection of Ninth Avenue West and West Howe Street in the city’s Queen Anne neighborhood where a victim said her SUV had just been stolen at gunpoint.
The woman told police that she was driving her Porsche Cayenne SUV and was rear-ended by a dark-colored Honda sedan.
“One of the suspects from the Honda sedan then exited the vehicle, holding paperwork as if he was going to exchange information. When [victim] went to grab her documents from the passenger side of the Porsche, the suspect put a gun to [victim’s] neck and demanded her keys, credit cards, and money,” detectives wrote in a police report.
The victim reported one suspect jumped in her Porsche and fled the scene with someone else driving the Honda behind it. She ran to get help and call 911.
As Seattle police were responding to the carjacking, an officer spotted the white Porsche SUV and the Honda sedan both driving recklessly on Mercer Street heading toward I-5.
The officer got behind the Porsche and confirmed the license plate number was the same as the carjacking victim’s vehicle and he attempted to pull over the car on I-5.
“The driver of the Porsche failed to pull over and began to elude at a high rate of speed through traffic on I-5. [SPD] officer lost sight of the Porsche shortly after,” the report states.
Seattle investigators later determined that two suspects had attempted to use credit cards belonging to the carjacking victim at a QFC in Normandy Park at 10:15 am, approximately 30 minutes before Ming’s murder.
After circulating surveillance photos from the QFC of the suspects, an investigator from a nearby agency recognized him as Haji, who he had dealt with in prior cases. Investigators compared Haji’s driver’s license photo to the surveillance video and determined it was the same person.
HAJI AND ABDI’S PRINTS WERE IN THE SUV
Investigators say the white Porsche SUV was captured on surveillance video in the Tukwila Costco parking lot during the murder at 10:40 a.m.
It is not clear from the report how quickly police made the connection between the Seattle carjacking and the Tukwila murder, but investigators say the owner of the stolen Porsche was working with Seattle police to use a factory-installed tracking system to locate the SUV. After the murder, the location showed the Porsche at the New Testament Church in the city of SeaTac where police said it had been abandoned and the floor mats had been removed, according to the report.
Investigators towed the Porsche to a secure facility and obtained a warrant to search it. According to the report, police found the Porsche’s license plates inside the trunk. The victim said only the rear plate had been attached to the SUV at the time it was carjacked. Based on witness accounts, investigators theorized the Porsche’s plates had been removed shortly before the murder in Tukwila because it had no visible plate on the rear in the surveillance video.
A latent print examiner matched a fingerprint on the license plate to Abdi, the report alleges. A fingerprint was pulled from the passenger side door handle and matched by the examiner to Haji, according to the report.
VICITM TARGETED WHILE LOADING GROCERIES
Yuam Ming was from China and was in Washington in January to visit her family. Ming and her sister had made a run to Costco for groceries on the morning of January 26.
According to police, Ming and her sister were loading their purchases into their car when Abdi and Haji approached them in the stolen Porsche. The sister was getting into the driver’s seat of the car when Haji ran up to her and attempted to grab her purse, the report states.
“Ming leaved over from the passenger seat and attempted to help. [Haji] repeatedly struck [Ming’s sister] as he continued to fight her for the purse, including strikes from the firearm he held in one of his hands. [Haji] then fired one round from the handgun, fatally striking Ming in the chest. Running back to the Porsche, the defendant jumped in the passenger seat and Abdi sped away from the scene,” Brookhyser wrote in charging papers.
TRACKING CELL PHONES
Having identified Haji from the surveillance photo at the QFC, investigators got a warrant for location data of his phone from AT&T, according to the report.
The data obtained from the warrant placed Haji’s phone at the QFC when the carjacking victim’s cards were used and at the scene of the Tukwila murder, the report states.
“At approximately 10:38 hours, Haji’s cell phone device arrives in the near vicinity of Costco in Tukwila, consistent with the arrival time of the Porsche SUV as seen on surveillance video at that location. Shortly after, Haji’s cell phone device moves towards the west, again, consistent with what is observed on surveillance video of the Porsche’s flight from the area after the shooting,” a detective wrote in the report.
In reviewing Haji’s phone data, investigators noted there were dozens of calls and texts with a new number on the day of the Tukwila Costco murder. Tukwila police obtained a warrant for the other number and found it was a prepaid phone or so-called ‘burner’ that had been activated on January 19.
“From my review of the location activity in the data, the top two most frequented locations for the device were in the vicinity of Abdi’s residence in Burien,” police wrote in the report.
According to the report, the phone had frequent contact with Haji and a line that was registered to Abdi’s father. The location data for the burner phone indicated it was at the scene of the Queen Anne carjacking, as well as the Normandy Park QFC, and the Costco at the time of the murder, the report alleges.
Tukwila police also got a warrant for an Instagram account that they believed belonged to Abdi. Instagram messages reviewed by police showed the account holder had provided the cell phone number of the burner phone to another user on January 25.
HAJI FLEES THE COUNTRY
On Jan. 30, four days after Ming’s murder, a King County Sheriff’s deputy made pulled Haji over while he was driving a Honda sedan in SeaTac.
It is not clear from the report if Haji had been identified as a possible suspect in the Tukwila Costco murder at that time.
The deputy noted there was front-end damage to the Honda, as well as an orange air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, which was consistent with the description given by the victim of the Seattle carjacking. The outcome of the traffic stop is not explained in the police report, but jail records do not indicate that Haji was booked for any charges that day.
The police report notes that on February 1, two days after the traffic stop in SeaTac, Haji boarded an international flight and left the U.S. and has not returned.
Also on Feb 1, a post by the Instagram account "Deadshot Journalism" alleged people in the community had identified Haji as the shooter and claimed Haji had gone live on Instagram in the stolen Porsche prior to the murder.
ABDI ARRESTED IN CONNECTION TO SEPARATE SHOOTING
Abdi was arrested on May 16 and booked into jail on charges of assault in the first degree in connection to a shooting that killed a teenager in Kent on February 21.
The charges allege that Abdi was chasing another driver through the streets of Kent while one or more people in his car were firing guns. During the shooting, a passenger in Abdi’s car, Maohamed-Amin Farah, 17, of Seattle, was killed. According to charging documents, Abdi then drove to a hospital in Renton and was seen "pounding on the doors" of the emergency room.
The Kent police report indicates Abdi and another teenager dropped Farah off and then fled the hospital. Farah died from a gunshot wound to the head and investigators allege the fatal shot was likely fired by someone who was in Abdi’s vehicle. Abdi’s prints were pulled from the ER glass door and he was identified, according to the charges.
Last week, Abdi’s bail was increased from $1 million for the assault charge to $6 million after prosecutors filed charges against him for the Ming's murder.
In addition to the same three charges – murder, robbery, and attempted robbery - that Haji is facing for the Tukwila Costco shooting, Abdi faces an additional felony charge of unlawful possession of a firearm in the first degree due to his previous felony conviction of attempted burglary.
Court records indicate Abdi has a criminal history that includes juvenile convictions for organized retail theft, theft, assault, theft of a motor vehicle, and criminal trespass.
Abdi is scheduled for an arraignment in the Kent assault case on May 30 and the Tukwila murder case on June 5.
