Fatal Chase Ends In Murder Verdict -- Seattle Officer's Death Leads To Rare Conviction

The second-degree-murder conviction of Robert D. Knowles for causing a fatal car crash while trying to elude a police officer is something of a local legal novelty.

King County Superior Court jurors yesterday agreed with prosecutors that Knowles killed off-duty Seattle Police Officer Ken Davis while committing a felony - attempting to elude a pursuing police officer - and therefore committed murder.

Such murder convictions are extremely rare, and, in fact, chief criminal deputy Mark Larson said the county's last murder conviction successfully based on a felony-driving crime was seven or eight years ago.

Usually, such cases are prosecuted as vehicular homicides, which carry significantly lower sentences. But prosecutors successfully argued that Knowles killed Davis while committing a felony.

Deputy Prosecutor Michael Hogan said he expects to seek the highest sentence within state guidelines, which is a little more than 18 years.

Davis' wife, Laureen, wept with relief after the verdict and said the ruling was important. "This was murder," she said emphatically.

Minutes after the verdict, in which Knowles, 29, was also convicted of hit-and-run driving and drug possession, she was congratulated by another police widow, Cheryl Terry, who has been attending the murder trial of two men charged with the shooting death of her husband, Seattle Police Officer Antonio Terry.

Knowles shook his head in disbelief when the verdict was read. He maintained that his former fiancee, the mother of his infant son, was the driver. He claimed he was sitting in the passenger seat when the crash occurred and ran, leaving his pregnant fiancee behind, because she didn't want him to be arrested while carrying cocaine.

No witness reported seeing a woman, and Knowles' former fiancee testified Wednesday that she was not in the car.

A State Patrol trooper spotted Knowles' Corvette driving erratically on southbound Interstate 5 just after 1 a.m. May 11 and pulled it over on the Northgate Way offramp.

As the trooper approached the car on foot, it suddenly sped off and turned west, where in the span of a few blocks it ran a stop sign on North 107th Street and rammed into Davis' personal vehicle, traveling north of Meridian Avenue North.

Davis, a 30-year veteran, had just left work at the North Precinct.

Knowles was arrested a short distance away trying to hide under an apartment-complex stairwell.