Authorities say teen charged in hit-and-run death wanted to ‘scare’ and ‘bump’ runner

A 15-year-old Seattle-area girl has been charged with murder after killing a jogger in an apparent hit-and-run. 

The girl turned herself in to King County sheriff’s detectives after she took a relative’s vehicle without permission and hit a man running on a rural road, King County prosecutors said to The Seattle Times.

“I wanted to scare him. I wanted to bump him,” the girl said, according to the charging documents. 

The girl told her teenage sister that she recalled laughing with her 14-year-old passenger when 53-year-old Greg Moore “flew over the car,” the charges say. 

Moore died from multiple blunt force injuries and a significant skull fracture, among other injuries, an autopsy showed. The charges say the girl was driving 50 miles per hour when the vehicle hit Moore. 

The girl has been charged with second-degree felony murder and felony hit-and-run, but prosecutors are unlikely to attempt to have her face charges as an adult. 

“There have been questions about why we have not charged this 15-year-old as an adult. That is not a legal option at this point. Because she was 15 at the time of the incident, she is not subject to automatic adult court jurisdiction,” Casey McNerthney, communications director for prosecutor Dan Satterberg, said in an email to The Hill.

After details about the car involved in the incident were made public, a woman went to the sheriff’s SeaTac precinct, as she thought her car might have been involved in the incident.

According to the charging documents, the woman told police that the 15-year-old girl had claimed damage on the car happened “because someone hit it with a bat.”

The girl is currently being held in detention at the Children and Family Justice Center in Seattle, and it is unclear if an attorney has been named to represent her, according to the report from The Seattle Times. 

The next case hearing about this matter will take place on Sept. 15.