Twenty-eight days passed after Heather Kelso was granted a protection order against her abusive ex-boyfriend to the night he pointed a gun at her and shot her in each leg and twice in the face.
He used the same Smith and Wesson 9mm handgun that Kelso had listed in her protection order. It was also a gun her boyfriend was legally barred from possessing once he was served with the protection order.
“There was no follow-up whatsoever,” said Elizabeth Forrester, a family friend who helped Heather escape her ex-boyfriend and fill out a protection order petition in February 2015.
“If somebody had followed-up, I think Heather would be alive today,” she said in her Bremerton home, as Heather’s now 3-year-old daughter Ava played in the next room.
Elizabeth and her husband Tony adopted Ava following Heather’s death.
More than three years after Heather Kelso’s murder, Kitsap County’s criminal justice system is still failing to get guns out of the hands of accused domestic abusers, even though that’s what is required by Washington law.
The KING 5 Investigators analyzed 215 “weapons surrender” orders filed in Kitsap County Superior Court in 2017. The data shows a stunning lack of compliance – 80 percent of people served with protection orders in the county did not respond after being served with a weapons surrender order signed by a judge. Only 19 percent complied with such orders and surrendered their guns or signed a form swearing that they did not possess firearms.
“(A) nineteen percent response rate is pretty startling,” said Frank Maiocco, the administrator of Kitsap County Superior Courts, when presented with KING 5’s findings.
Maiocco said judges were aware of the low compliance rate, but they didn’t know how low that number was.
“When I communicated that number to Judge (Sally) Olsen, our presiding judge, she was very, very concerned about the number,” said Maiocco.
The Kitsap Courts have looked toward King County for solutions on how to disarm accused domestic abusers. The Seattle-King County Regional Firearms Enforcement unit is a new team of police, prosecutors and advocates that investigates abusers who try to hide their firearms from the court. The unit has quadrupled the number of firearms recovered from domestic abusers subject to restraining orders issued by the King County court system.
But it comes at a price. The unit was funded at the beginning of 2018 with a commitment from Seattle and King County of $1 million.
“I don’t think we’re going to see that in Kitsap County funded through the general fund,” Maiocco said.
He says judges have been unsuccessful in finding ways to get more accused abusers to comply.
“We haven’t really come up with a good solution in terms of how to improve that number,” Maiocco said.
The consequences of that inaction can spill out into the community. Willie McCord opened fire and wounded two Bremerton police officers last December.
The two handguns he was toting were likely the ones that his wife reported to Bremerton police after McCord was served with a weapons surrender order in Kitsap County court on Nov. 16 – about a month before he shot officers Kent Mayfield and Allan McComas.
The officers returned fire and killed McCord in Lyons Park, a short distance from the home of his wife. She had received a protection order against McCord stemming from a November domestic violence call.
Documents obtained through a public records request show that, four days after the domestic violence incident, McCord’s wife turned in a rifle to Bremerton police. She also reported “Willie had threatened her with a .357 (handgun)” and that “Willie had a .357 and a .45” still in his possession.
There is no information in police files that indicates authorities tried to recover those guns before officers were called to investigate McCord lurking near his estranged wife’s house on the night of the shootout.
“I think it’s vital for these people to turn in their guns,” said Elizabeth Forrester.
Heather Kelso’s killer, Geraldo DeJesus, is serving multiple life sentences for two counts of premeditated, first-degree murder. In addition to killing Heather, DeJesus rampaged through her Bremerton trailer and shot and killed her roommate’s two-year-old son, Kaden Lum.
The heartache isn’t over. Tony and Elizabeth Forrester dread the day that they will have to tell Ava that her biological father is in prison for murdering her birth mother.
“How many other families and babies are not going to have moms, because of the violence?” said Elizabeth.
