EVERETT — Did Christopher Cowan cut open a pizza delivery driver’s stomach after being surprised during a car prowl, or was he wrongly arrested simply because he had the bad luck to buy some mints at a convenience store a few minutes later?
A Snohomish County jury on Tuesday began hearing testimony about a bloody encounter Jan. 17 behind a Domino’s Pizza restaurant in Edmonds.
The victim, 40, confronted a man he caught rummaging through his car. In the struggle that followed, he repeatedly was cut and stabbed. One wound was so deep the victim’s intestines were exposed.
Cowan, 35 and homeless, was arrested a few days later and charged with attempted first-degree murder.
Deputy prosecutor Craig Matheson said the case was built because of an “intersection of good police work and dumb luck.”
The victim told Edmonds police his attacker was wearing a backpack and dark clothing. A black baseball cap was left on the ground. A police dog followed the attacker’s trail from the restaurant and led officers to a witness who described a man running through his apartment complex just minutes after the attack. The running man said somebody had tried to rob him of his marijuana. He asked the witness to call him a cab. When the cab company didn’t answer, the man continued into the night. Before he did, he shucked off a heavy jacket and tossed some paperwork in the garbage.
It was raining hard that night and the police dog eventually lost the suspect’s trail. Officers checked at a nearby convenience store to see if anyone matching the attacker’s description had been spotted. Turns out a man with a backpack, but wearing no coat, had dropped by minutes after the stabbing. He bought a roll of Mentos and left behind a pawn slip bearing the defendant’s name.
“You know, in the business, police would call that a clue,” Matheson said.
Officers obtained surveillance video from the store, as well as from the pawn shop. In pawn shop video Cowan was wearing a bulky jacket and black baseball cap, similar to those left behind by the attacker.
The witness from the apartment complex was shown a photo montage. He picked out Cowan as the running man from the night of the attack.
Genetic tests of the jacket and hat were inconclusive, but Cowan’s left thumbprint was found on the paperwork left at the apartment complex, Matheson said.
When arrested, Cowan repeatedly denied stabbing anyone.
Police got the wrong man, public defender Jennifer Bartlett told jurors.
“From buying a piece of candy, Chris becomes a suspect,” she said.
She said the defense plans to call an expert on suspect identification. The expert is expected to testify that the photo montage unfairly focused attention on Cowan, who has a distinctive gap between his teeth — a characteristic the witness noticed the night of the attack.
The thumbprint, meanwhile, was not compared with anyone besides the defendant, she said, including people known to have handled the paperwork where it was found.
Once Cowan’s name was found on the pawn slip, police ignored evidence that didn’t support their hypothesis, she said.
“A thorough and competent investigation, a meticulous investigation, was not done in this case,” she said.
Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snorthnews.
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