After a desperate 911 call, officers discovered Tevin A. Geike, a Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier, in a parking lot in Lakewood, Washington suffering multiple stab wounds just after 2:30 a.m. He died at the scene.
The victim's two friends, also soldiers and also white, told police they were walking south on Pacific Highway when a vehicle approached them and someone inside called out a racial slur.
One of the soldiers yelled back something about those in the car treating combat soldiers with disrespect, Lawler said.
The car then turned around, stopped next to the soldiers and five black males piled out of the vehicle.
A verbal confrontation started, Lawler said, but the driver called his friends off when he learned some of the soldiers were actually combat veterans.
As the group returned to the car, one of the suspects appeared to bump into Geike, Lawler said.
The two soldiers then saw their friend fall to the ground as the car sped away. That's when they discovered Geike had been stabbed and was bleeding profusely.
Jeremiah Hill, 23; Cedarium Johnson, 21; and Ajoni Runnion-Bareford, 21, were arrested on charges of murder in the death Saturday of Army Spc. Tevin Geike, police said Monday.
The sergeant went to police. Later, investigators identified and talked to a man who was among the five in the car. That man told investigators that Hill had bear-hugged Geike and pushed him to the ground, and that Hill was covered in blood when he got into the car, police said.
The five sped away and got rid of the knife, police said, citing the unidentified witness. A second person corroborated the witness's account, according to police.