Search expands for former Army soldier accused of killing his 3 young daughters in Washington state

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Search expands for former Army soldier accused of killing his 3 young daughters in Washington state

2025-06-07 13:23 Last Updated At：13:31

SEATTLE (AP) — Authorities have closed a wide swath of popular campgrounds and backpacking areas along the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington as they search for a former Army soldier wanted in the deaths of his three young daughters.

Dozens of additional law enforcement officers from an array of agencies joined the investigation and search Friday for Travis Caleb Decker, 32, four days after the girls — 9-year-old Paityn Decker, 8-year-old Evelyn Decker and 5-year-old Olivia Decker — were found dead at a remote campsite outside Leavenworth.

The girls’ mother reported them missing the night of May 30 when Decker failed to return them to her home in Wenatchee, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Seattle, after a scheduled visit.

Gov. Bob Ferguson announced Friday night that he was ordering the state’s National Guard to help with the search, saying “we will be providing helicopter transportation for law enforcement as they search in remote areas.”

“The brutal murder of these young children has shocked our state,” he added in a statement on social media. “I’m committed to supporting law enforcement as they seek justice for Paityn, Evelyn and Olivia.”

The Chelan County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that there were more than 100 officers involved in the search, which covered rugged terrain in the Cascade Mountains of central Washington, and more than 500 tips had poured in from the public.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we have been given notice to, and are working in conjunction with our surrounding counties in the event Mr. Decker moves through the forest into their jurisdiction,” the statement said.

Decker was an infantryman in the Army from March 2013 to July 2021 and deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2014, according to Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Ruth Castro. From 2014 to 2016, he was an automatic rifleman with the 75th Ranger Regiment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.

Last September his ex-wife, Whitney Decker, wrote in a petition to modify their parenting plan that his mental health issues had worsened and that he had become increasingly unstable, often living out of his truck. She sought to restrict him from having overnight visits with the girls until he found housing.

“He has made huge sacrifices to serve our country and loves his girls very much but he has got to get better,” she wrote. “I do not want to keep Travis from the girls at all. ... But I cannot have our girls staying in what is essentially a homeless shelter, at times unsupervised, with dozens of strange men, or staying in a tent or living in his truck with him both in extreme temperatures and unknown areas for their safety.”

Authorities warned people to be on the lookout for Decker and asked those with remote homes, cabins or outbuildings to keep them locked, to leave blinds open so law enforcement can see inside and to leave exterior lights on.

It was unclear if Decker was armed, but the Chelan County Sheriff's Office said he should be considered dangerous. A reward of up to $20,000 was offered for information leading to his arrest.

An online fundraiser for Whitney Decker raised more than $1 million, and friends Amy Edwards, who taught the girls in a theater program called “Short Shakespeareans,” and Mark Belton thanked supporters during a news conference Thursday.

“Their laughter, curiosity and spirit left a mark on all of us,” Edwards said. “They were the kind of children that everyone rooted for, looked forward to seeing and held close in their hearts.”

Edwards and Belton said Whitney Decker hopes the tragedy prompts changes to the state's Amber Alert system as well as improvements in mental health care for veterans. The night the girls were reported missing, Wenatchee police asked the Washington State Patrol to issue an Amber Alert but it declined, saying that as a custody matter without an imminent threat, the case did not meet the criteria for one.

The patrol did issue an “endangered missing person alert” the next day, but those do not result in notifications being sent to mobile phones.

As searches expanded for the girls last weekend, a sheriff's deputy found Decker's pickup in the area of Rock Island Campground, northwest of Leavenworth. There were two bloody handprints on the tailgate. The girls' bodies were discovered down an embankment nearby with evidence that they had been bound with zip ties, according to an affidavit filed in support of murder and kidnapping charges against Decker.

County Coroner Wayne Harris said Friday that his office was awaiting pathology results to determine when and how the girls were killed.

Authorities issued closure notices the previous day for that camping area, which lies in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, as well as for a large swath of rugged territory to the north. That included trails and campgrounds along the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from the Canadian border to Mexico, and around Stehekin, at the northern end of Lake Chelan.

Hennepin County prosecutor calls on the public to share Renee Good shooting evidence with her office

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty on Friday called on members of the public to send any video or other evidence in the fatal shooting of Renee Good directly to her office, challenging the Trump administration's decision to leave the investigation solely to the FBI.

Moriarty said that although her office has collaborated effectively with the FBI in past cases, she is concerned by the Trump administration's decision to bar state and local agencies from playing any role in the investigation into Wednesday's killing of Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.

She also said that despite the Trump administration’s insistence that the officer who shot Good has complete legal immunity, that isn’t the case.

“We do have jurisdiction to make this decision with what happened in this case,” she said at a news conference. “It does not matter that it was a federal law enforcement agent.”

Moriarty said her office would post a link for the public to submit footage of the shooting, even though she acknowledged that she wasn't sure what legal outcome submissions might produce.

The prosecutor's announcement came on a third day of Minneapolis protests over Good's killing and a day after federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon.

Good's wife, Becca Good, released a statement to Minnesota Public Radio on Friday saying, “kindness radiated out of her.”

"On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns," Becca Good said.

“I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him,” she wrote. “That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.”

The reaction to the Good's shooting was immediate in the city where police killed George Floyd in 2020, with hundreds of protesters converging on the shooting scene and the school district canceling classes for the rest of the week as a precaution.

On Thursday night, hundreds marched in freezing rain down one of Minneapolis’ major thoroughfares, chanting “ICE out now!” and holding signs saying, “Killer ice off our streets." And on Friday, protesters were out again demonstrating outside of a federal facility that is serving as a hub for the immigration crackdown that began Tuesday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Authorities erected barricades outside the facility Friday.

City workers, meanwhile, removed makeshift barricades made of old Christmas trees and other debris that had been blocking the streets near the scene of Good's shooting. Officials said they would leave up a shrine to the 37-year-old mother of three.

The Portland shootings happened outside a hospital Thursday afternoon. Federal immigration officers shot and wounded a man and woman, identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Venezuela nationals Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, who were inside a vehicle, and their conditions weren't immediately known. The FBI and the Oregon Department of Justice were investigating.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the city council called on ICE to end all operations in the city until a full investigation is completed. Hundreds protested Thursday night at a local ICE building. Early Friday, Portland police reported that officers had arrested several protesters after asking the to get out of a street to allow traffic to flow.

Just as it did following Good's shooting, DHS defended the actions of the officers in Portland, saying it occurred after a Venezuelan man with alleged gang ties and who was involved in a recent shooting tried to “weaponize” his vehicle to hit the officers. It wasn't immediately clear if the shootings were captured on video, as Good's was.

The Minneapolis shooting happened on the second day of the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, which Homeland Security said is the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever. More than 2,000 officers are taking part and Noem said they have made more than 1,500 arrests.

The government is also shifting immigration officers to Minneapolis from sweeps in Louisiana, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. This represents a pivot, as the Louisiana crackdown that began in December had been expected to last into February.

Good's death — at least the fifth tied to immigration sweeps since Trump took office — has resonated far beyond Minneapolis, as protests happening in other places, including Texas, California, Detroit and Missouri.

In Washington, D.C., on Thursday, a woman held a sign that said, “Stop Trump’s Gestapo,” as hundreds of people marched to the White House. Protesters in Pflugerville, Texas, north of Austin, banged on the walls of an ICE facility. And a man in Los Angeles burned an American flag in front of federal detention center.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly characterized the Minneapolis shooting as an act of self-defense and cast Good as a villain, suggesting she used her vehicle as a weapon to attack the officer who shot her.

But state and local officials and protesters rejected that characterization, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying videos show the self-defense argument is “garbage.”

Several bystanders captured footage of Good's killing, which happened in a neighborhood south of downtown.

The recordings show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.

It is not clear from the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer, and there is no indication of whether the woman had interactions with agents earlier. After the shooting, the SUV speeds into two cars parked on a curb before crashing to a stop.

The federal agent who fatally shot Good is an Iraq War veteran who has served for nearly two decades in the Border Patrol and ICE, according to records obtained by AP.

Noem has not publicly named him, but a Homeland Security spokesperson said her description of his injuries last summer refers to an incident in Bloomington, Minnesota, in which court documents identify him as Jonathan Ross.

Ross got his arm stuck in the window of a vehicle whose driver was fleeing arrest on an immigration violation. Ross was dragged and fired his Taser. A jury found the driver guilty of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.

Attempts to reach Ross, 43, at phone numbers and email addresses associated with him were not successful.

Associated Press reporters Steve Karnowski and Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis; Ed White in Detroit; Valerie Gonzalez in Brownsville, Texas; Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Jim Mustian and Safiyah Riddle in New York; Ryan Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.