A man irritated by a persistent car alarm has been charged with second-degree murder for shooting a college student who couldn't figure out how to turn it off.
Terrance Milton Hall, 57, was charged Tuesday in the Thanksgiving death of Steven Burgess, 21, of Shady Cove, Ore.Hall, an unemployed electrician, was being held on $500,000 bail pending his arraignment Thursday in King County Superior Court. If convicted, he could spend up to 15 years, eight months in prison, prosecutors said.
Burgess, a student at ITT Technical Institute near Seattle, and three friends had just parked the rented Jeep when its alarm went off. Burgess was trying to find the alarm under the hood when Hall, who lived in a small trailer across the street, approached him.
Hall screamed at the young people to stop the noise, then fired a shot into the vehicle's grille. Burgess then told the gunman to go away and pushed him on the shoulder, according to court documents.
Hall reacted "by taking a step toward the victim, raising the derringer and firing point blank into Burgess' chest," the prosecutor's office alleges.
After screaming once more at the three stunned women in the Jeep, Hall said, "You better get a blanket. Your friend is dying," then returned to his trailer, prosecutors said.
Burgess died a few hours later at Harborview Medical Center.