King County prosecutors said a man from Washington fatally shot another man in the chest with a flare gun and waited almost an hour before calling 911.
Philip Urban, 29, is charged with second-degree murder and is accused of firing a modified shotgun shell at Bryan Lesick, 41, after an argument in his Auburn apartment last Wednesday, the Seattle Times reported.
Urban told investigators that after the shooting, he spent 30 minutes looking for his phone and talked to a friend for another 20 minutes before calling 911, the charges say.
It was a little after 2:30 p.m. when Urban finally called 911 and told the dispatcher he shot a man.
When police and medics arrived on the scene, police found a flare gun on the patio. Urban and Lesick were inside the residence, the latter with a substantial hole in his chest. He was already cold to the touch and unresponsive when medics arrived and was later pronounced dead at the scene, according to charging papers.
Investigators said there was an altercation between Urban and Lesick in the residence. Urban then proceeded to pick up the weapon and shot Lesick once in the chest. Police don't know the relationship between the two men, only that they knew each other, the Auburn Police Department said in a Facebook statement.
The autopsy showed that Lesick had been struck in the chest by the bullet and hit his heart and left lung. The pathologist told police that type of injury to the chest would have killed him in minutes, according to the charges.
Police said Urban gave multiple variations of the events, according to the Seattle Times. In one case, Urban said he and Lesick got into a physical altercation. However, neither of them had injuries that showed they were in a fight, the charging papers said.
Urban told officers he modifies the shotgun shells to make them less lethal by filling them with rock salt or corks and match heads, according to police.
Urban said he previously shot a man in the leg with one of the modified shells last year but wasn't charged because the victim didn't want to be involved, the Seattle Times reported.
Police say Urban told officers he'd gone to bed after working a night shift and woke up to find Lesick in the kitchen, cooking, the charges said. Apparently angry that people were using his apartment as a "flop house," police say Urban claimed he and Lesick got into a fight.
Urban remains jailed in lieu of $1 million bail, jail and court records show. It does not yet appear that an attorney has been retained on his behalf.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
