A law protecting youth rights is blocking justice for Mobarak Adam’s family

For nearly two months there has been silence around the violent death of a ninth grader across the street from his West Seattle high school. No details about exactly how 15-year-old Mobarak Adam was shot, nor who was responsible, though police have a pretty good idea who was there.

While the King County medical examiner ruled the boy’s Jan. 23 death a homicide, Seattle investigators say they may never be able to provide his family with essential information surrounding it — let alone hold anyone to account.

The reason for this swirl of intrigue is a new state law aimed at safeguarding the rights of juvenile suspects, which may have been misapplied. The upshot is that kids who know what happened to Mobarak were assigned lawyers prior to speaking with detectives, and are not talking.

To Mobarak’s mother, worse than yearning for her child’s daily hugs after school or feeling the ache of his absence on their weekend shopping trips to Costco, is this lack of answers. The mystery haunts her. All she knows is that her son left Chief Sealth High School after his fourth-period English class at 1:20, and by 1:42 was dead on the floor of the community center bathroom across the street.

At first, she and her husband were told that Mobarak shot himself, a puzzling assertion for a kid known throughout his school as an easygoing jokester, friendly to all.

Others suggested that his death was a tragic accident. But the police told Mobarak’s family he was shot in the back. That doesn’t sound like an accident, though it could be.

Ethiopian immigrants who were part of a tight community, Mobarak’s parents now live in a cloud of isolated confusion. At first, friends and neighbors surged forward with sympathy and support. That has fallen away. Last Sunday, the family went alone to visit Mobarak in a cemetery, preparing to observe their first Ramadan without him.

Every day, they spin through a reel of unanswered questions: Why did no one immediately take their boy to an emergency room instead of allowing him to bleed to death on a bathroom floor? If the shooting was an accident, why didn’t the three boys in the bathroom with Mobarak stay around to help him? Why did they get rid of the gun, which is still missing? Being underage, how did they have a gun in the first place?

To Mobarak’s older sister, their silence itself feels like a crime, an obstruction of justice. Her father, Sharif Mohammed, agrees.

“We might have forgiven them if they’d come forward in the beginning,” he said.

Seattle police Chief Adrian Diaz says the new state law has hindered an investigation because it mandates that kids under 18 speak with an attorney before they are searched, held for questioning, or arrested.

The rationale behind this sounds reasonable. Outmatched by professional investigators, kids frequently incriminate themselves and need their rights protected. But the law’s wording has left room for confusion that, in this case, may obliterate justice.

It is also wildly broad, applying the same way to young people suspected of shoplifting as it does to kids who may have information about a homicide.

The law doesn’t explicitly prohibit detectives from talking with juvenile witnesses. It allows interviews with kids not in custody. It also permits police to act on youth statements “made spontaneously.”

But it appears that in trying to abide by the rules, investigators shied from questioning key observers immediately after the shooting and lost the slim chance they had to collect valuable information before defense lawyers got involved.

So here we sit, with a dead child, various branches of law enforcement pointing fingers, and a nagging sense within Mobarak’s family that no one will ever answer for their loss — including the legal system.

“This is unacceptable,” said City Councilmember Rob Saka, who represents West Seattle, where the killing took place.

The police department’s slavish interpretation of the law may be due to a report, issued a month before Mobarak’s death, faulting them for routinely violating young people’s rights. In a sample of 50 juvenile cases from 2021 and ’22 where kids should have been connected with attorneys, the police did so only twice.

Which raises a question by implication: Can the police solve juvenile crimes without violating youths’ rights?

Whether the problem investigating Mobarak Adam’s death stems from a misunderstanding on the part of law enforcement, or overbroad language in the law itself, Saka, who happens to be an attorney, promises to address its vagaries during the next legislative session.

In the meantime, a mom in West Seattle goes nights without rest, knowing that someone who killed her child — intentionally or not — is walking free, without consequence.

“That’s the most wrenching thing about it,” said Saka. “Mobarak’s mom can’t sleep, while whoever was involved in this is lying peacefully in their bed.”