Drugs, ‘diminished respect for life’ fueled many of Spokane County’s 25 homicides in 2023

Linsey “Davy” Callaway packed up his car and left his Texas home after an argument with his family. Ten years later, he was in Spokane, homeless, mentally ill and addicted to drugs.

He was found dead inside a vacant home last November with $38 in his pocket. Somebody had shot him multiple times and fled. No one has been arrested.

Callaway is among the 25 homicides in Spokane County last year, according to data compiled by The Spokesman-Review. The number does not include people who were killed in car crashes, by police shootings or in cases of self-defense.

In four of the cases, no one has been arrested.

The number of homicides dropped by four from 2022. In 2021, there were 24 homicides in Spokane County.

Nationally, violent crime rates are trending downward, according to the FBI’s crime database. But Washington is going in the wrong direction.

The state’s violent crime rate jumped 26% from 2012 to 2022, and homicides increased by 58%.

Callaway’s mother does not want her son’s life to be relegated to a statistic. He was a person who loved animals, Lark Pogue said. He loved to go camping and fishing.

When Callaway left Texas, he didn’t call his mother for several years. When he finally did check in, he seemed to be doing OK, Pogue said.

But things devolved.

“All of a sudden, it went bad,” Pogue said. “Every time he would go to jail for trespassing, I would call and ask them to get him some mental illness help.”

Calloway suffered from bipolar disorder.

“And we just have never been able to get help,” Pogue said.

Callaway didn’t have an easy childhood. His father died, the family was impoverished and there “was no stability,” Pogue acknowledged.

One day when Callaway called his mother, he talked about enjoying camping and panning for gold. But he had no valid ID, no bank account and was living on the streets.

The phone calls were sporadic.

On July 23 , Callaway called his mom again. He said he was struggling. She tried to persuade him to get mental help like she had done so many times.

The last time Callaway called was early October. She didn’t pick up.

“A friend brought me a small puppy. Right as he was bringing that puppy in, (Callaway) tried to call me and I didn’t take it. He left me a desperate message saying he was going to be arrested. And I didn’t take the call,” Pogue said.

A month later, police were at her door with the news of her son’s death.

When Spokane Police Sgt. Christopher Bode starts investigating a homicide, he can usually answer the “who, what, when, where, how.” But answering the “why” is harder.

“There’s a lot of times that we just don’t get there,” Bode said. “Only the person who commits the crime knows the reason why, and sometimes they’ve died or they don’t want to talk. Sometimes we never get that answer.”

Bode said there’s not always one clear-cut reason for violence. Some killings are triggered by something that happened months earlier. Others happen during an angry outburst.

Bode said some homicides he sees are the result of domestic violence. Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels blames drugs for many of the homicides in the county.

The sheriff’s office recorded seven homicides in 2023, right on track with its five-year average, Nowels said.

“We’ve added personnel to our major crimes unit over the last couple of years. It was because of the demands of the increased workloads of violent crime and murders,” Nowels said. “Hiring people in the law, particularly in the state of Washington right now, is such a challenge … there’s vacant positions in patrol work in the street because I had to have them as detectives back in major crimes.”

Major crimes tend to take a toll on officers, who spend their entire shifts seeing the “worst of the worst,” according to Bode. And it’s somewhat inspiring to him the amount of work his detectives do without question or protest – whether it’s at 10 a.m. or 3 a.m., those officers will show up to help even if they’re not on call.

“Not only do we see it, we have to figure it out,” Bode said. “We come in and we’ll be there for hours studying tragedy.”

While investigators want to make arrests, Bode said, the focus shouldn’t be entirely on the suspect.

“We work for our victims,” he said, “and there’s a lot of times that due to unfortunate circumstances, there’s some of our victims that don’t even have a family.

“We’re the only ones that really speak for them.”

Eventually, investigations wind up with the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office.

Homicide cases are “incredibly time-consuming,” said Preston McCollam, chief criminal deputy prosecutor.

He said the office is meant to be staffed with 52 attorneys in the criminal division. But it has been running with between 45 and 48 the past year or so. About seven or eight of those prosecutors handle homicide cases.

“When you divide murder cases out amongst that group, it starts to become a little bit taxing,” McCollam said.

“We’re making do,” McCollam said. “As an office as a whole, we’re really overwhelmed … Fortunately, we’ve got a lot of really good attorneys in this building that can handle the homicides.”

Regardless of the challenges faced by law enforcement and prosecutors, McCollam said the immense time and effort put into homicide cases is unchanged.

“Despite the increasing numbers, we’re not lowering our standards as it relates to homicides,” he said. “They’re incredibly difficult because there’s nobody in that courtroom that wants to make sure things are done right more than the prosecutor.”

Like Nowels, McCollam attributed drugs to many homicides in the county.

A lack of appreciation for human life is another factor, McCollam said.

“I think for whatever reason in this time period that we’re living in right now, there’s a diminished respect for life,” he said. “There’s a diminished respect for your fellow human.”

He said homicides are happening all over the place in the county, including next to shopping malls and homes. Road rage and social media fights have led to killings.

“It’s wild to me,” McCollam said.