Kids at gunpoint, casino casings: How south Seattle Asian immigrants became the target of home invasions

T

he cheery yellow house sits on a hill that overlooks Puget Sound. It’s quiet here in this suburb south of Seattle, with retirees and families — little crime of note.

That changed in the cool early hours of June 7, when burglars in ski masks and Nike sneakers ascended the driveway and knocked down the yellow house door, leaving shards on the ground. Inside, a woman named Xiao and her husband slept.

The yellow house wasn’t alone — it was one of at least 14 homes broken into during a two-months long run of violent robberies targeting Asian immigrants in south Seattle and nearby suburbs.

These break-ins bore marks of unusual cruelty: guns shoved in mouths, jewelry roughly grabbed off victims, children led through their homes at gunpoint until they could produce cash and luxury handbags.

“The people — so cold,” Xiao said. She and her husband have lived in the yellow house for 33 years. “They wanted me to get the jewelry and the money: ‘Give me the money. I’ll kill you. Where’s the ring?’”

KUOW has agreed to identify some victims only by partial names, due to privacy concerns.

Five men and a teenage boy were arrested in September in connection with these robberies — but police weren’t sure they got the whole crew, and similar break-ins continued. In October, a home in Auburn was invaded using a similar method, by masked culprits shouting “Seattle police” before kicking open the door.

These home invasions, targeting Asian immigrants, didn’t make headlines when they started in June.

The Seattle Police Department waited months to call attention to the crimes, despite members of their robbery unit sounding the alarm internally. The department finally called a press conference two months later on Aug. 29, and even then police said victims should have called police sooner, even with significant language barriers.

The yellow house

On June 7, the sky was clear and a half moon waned. Xiao slept deeply in her bedroom on the second floor.

She was startled awake by a loud sound – she worried her husband, who has Parkinson’s disease, had fallen off his bed in his nearby room.

As Xiao stepped out of her bedroom to investigate, she came face to face with a masked man pointing a gun at her head.

The man led her into her husband’s bedroom. Her husband lay in bed as another man pointed a gun at his chest.

Their safe was on the floor.

“He said, ‘I kill you if you don’t open,’” Xiao said. “I was so scared. I look at my husband, and I think, we both die right away if I not open.”

She said that when she opened the safe, they grabbed jewels and cash — $20,000.

Police said one of the burglars left DNA evidence behind. The DNA was traced to Jaqawn Jamison, 24, who told detectives he had not been at the yellow house.

Jamison lives with his mother, grandmother, and two brothers in south Seattle. After being arrested in September, Jamison told detectives that he was not employed, and that his days consisted of staying home, playing video games.

His little brother, referred to as TJ, 17, in court records, was also arrested and charged for involvement with some of these burglaries, as cell phone tracing placed his phone at several of the crime scenes.

Jamison and TJ both entered not guilty pleas.

Jequetta Jamison, Jaqawn and TJ’s mom, spoke with KUOW recently.

“[TJ] is actually a really good kid,” she said.

She said TJ’s father was murdered when he was 7. His grandmother sheltered him, she said, homeschooling him until ninth grade.

When TJ started at Rainier Beach High School, however, a rebellious streak took hold, she said.

“It’s just the neighborhoods us Black people live in, and the poverty we’re going through, that when kids get together, it just turns out bad,” Jequetta Jamison said.

In ninth grade, TJ met adults a decade older than him, she said. “He was hanging out with some homeless dude living in a house.”

“We can’t go outside and hold these kids’ hands and go to school with them,” Jequetta Jamison said. “We just wish that they know right [from wrong], you know? I can’t do that or I’ll be homeless. I have to go to work every day.”

TJ had been to juvenile detention two times before he was arrested for burglary in September. Jequetta Jamison said she wished he would try marijuana rehab, but he isn’t interested.

She believes prosecutors were too harsh with TJ in his first run-in with the law — he had previously been arrested in connection with an apartment complex laundromat being vandalized using a fire extinguisher.

TJ and Jamison’s associates in the home invasions have long rap sheets with violent histories.

Among them, Tyrhone Marr, 32, who lived alone in a south Seattle house set far back from the road.

Marr is currently facing eight counts of animal cruelty after an Animal Control officer found a starving gray pit bull named Guap shivering on a towel on the porch. Officers found a room downstairs spattered in blood and mud, with a door chewed up, as though a dog was trying to get out — signs of dog fighting.

One associate allegedly tried to kill his ex-girlfriend in Rainier Beach, according to court records. Another was convicted of a drive-by shooting. Two had so much fentanyl on them that detectives wrote in police reports that they believed they were dealing to people living in encampments, charging 40 cents a pill.

One of the burglars owns a nail salon in Greenwood; his wife had given birth in August.

The casino connection

Another robbery victim, Liang, still puzzles over why burglars would target his family; he suspects the trail begins at a casino, where he said his mother plays the table minimum for fun.

“If someone gambled big, a lot of money, totally understand, but she plays a little card game,” Liang said.

Police have speculated that burglars identify people at the casinos, going for Asian immigrants who are thought to be unlikely to be armed, less confrontational, and have cash on hand. While anti-Asian hate crimes dropped between 2021 and 2022, according to FBI data, they spiked during the first year of the pandemic. No hate crime charges have been filed in relation to these burglaries, but they haven't been ruled out either.

At 1:35 a.m. on June 25, four or five men showed up to Liang’s parents’ home on Beacon Hill. Their home is modest and sits far back from the street, almost directly under Interstate 5 — the sound of cars overhead is constant. That’s a thread between many of these houses — they’re far enough from the neighbors to attract notice.

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Liang said his father heard a noise and opened the bedroom door. “Someone put a gun to my father's head, pistol-whipped my dad's face, and demanded money,” he said.

They took about $2,000 cash.

And then, signaling this was more than a random break-in, they drove to Liang’s house in Renton. Five guys inside of a four-door pickup truck pulled up.

His mother-in-law was home with Liang’s 12-year-old son.

“The first guy ran straight upstairs and held my mother-in-law down, using his big hand,” Liang said. She still managed to let out screams.

They left Liang’s son alone. Hallway video footage shows that the boy wandered out of his room in his underwear at one point, dazed, and then walked back in.

They took $24,000, jewelry, and handbags before fleeing, according to court records.

“The first month after that happened, no one could sleep,” Liang said. He and his wife took turns sitting in a room on the second floor that overlooked their driveway.

They got an alarm system, a gun, and they cut down the cherry blossom tree in the front yard so the neighbors could see their front door better. They plan to install window bars.

They still don’t feel safe.

“Anytime someone knocks on the door, everyone jumps up,” he said. “A lot of the people I know have been robbed.”

Back at the yellow house in Des Moines, Xiao cried as she described what she had endured. She said she turns on the TV and sees more robberies, and it scares her.

“What can I do?” she asked. “I have to live.”

This story was reported by Ashley Hiruko and Gustavo Sagrero Álvarez and written by Isolde Raftery.