SNOHOMISH — After being attacked outside her home May 31, a mom is wondering why the man who beat a boy with a baseball bat isn’t being held in jail.
Prosecutors this month charged Kyle Estes with domestic violence, threats to kill, assault and for committing a hate crime. All four are felony charges. He bailed out shortly after being arrested at the start of the month.
With Estes out, “I’ve never been more scared to be in my house,” Betsy Peterson-Rodriguez said in an interview with a reporter earlier this month. “Kyle’s last words to us when he drove off were ‘I’m going to kill you, b-----’.”
The incident May 31 happened near 10th Street and Pine Avenue.
Estes, a 22-year-old Sultan man, came to antagonize the family, and he beat his teenage half-brother with the bat, according to a police officer’s probable cause charging report.
“It was racially motivated,” Peterson-Rodriguez said.
Estes yelled at the mom and made a gesture like he’d shoot her, and then drove off, going past the house multiple times. Estes’ half-brother, who is friends with the mom’s daughter, came outside. Somebody tried to take a picture, and this set off Estes, Peterson-Rodriguez said. He parked and jumped out of the car with a bat and beat on his half-brother, according to the police report.
Estes‘ half-brother was beaten badly, Peterson-Rodriguez said. As of mid-June, she said she’d heard the boy was still throwing up from pain. The Tribune did not contact his family.
In the incident, the mom grabbed the bat away and beat on Estes’ Cadillac, damaging the windshield.
Estes tried to drive off, knocking down a female and driving over her arm as he drove over the curb.
Estes called the teenage daughter a “n----- b-----,” Peterson-Rodriguez told police.
Three people received care at a hospital as a result, Peterson-Rodriguez said. She was one of them when Estes turned the bat on her. Estes also went to a hospital before going to jail because he told officers he was hit with a bat, too, according to the police report.
Her teenage daughter is slowly healing mentally about feeling safe in her community again, Peterson-Rodriguez said. “It’s going to take a while for her to heal.”
It wasn’t the first time Estes has been charged with domestic violence this year: In March, he received a fourth-degree domestic violence charge, which is classified as a gross misdemeanor.
The woman identified as the estranged mother claimed in a cell phone video that Estes kidnapped her and threatened her earlier this year. The woman’s video was shown to a Tribune reporter over social media.
It is understood the victim in March was the woman Estes sired a child with, who he’s now estranged from. That woman was introduced to the Snohomish family as “a big sister” to Estes’ half-brother, Peterson-Rodriguez said.
Peterson-Rodriguez said Estes’ friends have threatened the estranged mother of his child, and these friends told Peterson-Rodriguez and her daughter to not cooperate with police.
Peterson-Rodriguez’s daughter has babysat Estes’ child.
The incident made the family nervous. It lingers about feeling unsafe, Peterson-Rodriguez said.
It’s also given a fresh, unpleasant perspective on race in Snohomish for the mom. She said unfriendliness to people of color has worsened in the past two years.
Estes being out raises some caution to them. “We do fear a lot, but we’re not going to let that define us,” Peterson-Rodriguez said.
