119 - The Mysterious Death of Russell Evans

Brian was with him or there.... thats why he was calling for him. R.i.p

Poor family. All because some incompetent lazy police department can't or won't do their job.

5 mins in...he had my birthday. I don't know if I wanna finish it.

Every parents nightmare....lazy cops/detectives.

So either they hit him to knock him down and then got out and beat him, or they beat his ass then as they were trying to back up and drive away they hit him or ran over him.
Either way Brian most likely knows who is involved. He’s a coward to say the least, thirty years later you’d think he would’ve grown at least one ball.

I think they had a bat or an object to go beat up russel because he was a tall guy, pulled over beat him up and then got in their car and hit him while he was trying to walk home..I think his friend brian was around him at the time, brian was probably scared and ran while they were attacking him

I live in Spokane. I know this case pretty well. Your comment about throwing shoes on the powerlines is very true. You will find Shoes on powerlines here as well. And that still happens today so I imagine in the 80s it was common

I know who did this, but the police won't act because the prime suspect is dead.

Wtf?! If there’s blood & DNA WHY not test it?! Omg I hate when they don’t like so stupid! & why didn’t they question people more?! Or look up the group or the car to find the driver? Poor family like It’s bad enough he died with all the evidence why didn’t they give a rats ass sooner ?! ...they should re look this big time!

what if only his tips got under the wheel, that would explain why his shoes got off and his laces mightve been seperated. it could also be that he tried to punch the guy holding him while he gor dragged along, mean while he struggled to get himself out of the grip, he bumped himself into the car, the guy holding him also mightve punched him in the face.
can a spine break by being bend or stretched? when his feet are stuck under the whel but the guy held him tight, a body can only stretch that far.. idk just an idea.

Just because you are leaving a crime scene hastily doesnt mean that you did it. I once saw a biker getting ran over, but i left quick because i was wanted by the police at the time, and since i wasnt involved i put my feet to use because i sure as hell wasnt going to be detained and faced charges just because some idiot was driving recklessly. PERIOD

Hit hard enough to knock his shoelaces out of his shoes? Idk. I'm not believing that. I see your shoes coming off, but shoelaces have to be unlaced. Seems odd.

Teens do horrible things when angry and don't think of consequences.

So. Russell must have been going downhill on right or middle of road close to home wherein the 2 Brothers came after him before he could make it home. Sadly rip Russell.
Maybe the car hit him throwing the body onto car and the driver reversed car to throw him off but Russell recognized Brian. The the driver drove off and hit Russell again. Brian jumped out , looked at his friend and started running.
He called hospital soon.
One car in Spokane is the killer car.
Some one of them have to know which.

It seems to me that Brian was with Russell and something happened with a car full of guys where Brian said something that provoked them. They came after Brian and Russell and Brian ran. So Brian doesn’t want to say that he provoked the attack and ran away leaving Russell to confront them himself.

And how didn’t anyone remember Brian wearing all white that day?? Were people asked? A kid in all white is somewhat memorable.

And let’s face it, police are often incompetent, have no experience handling a crime scene, and blow the investigation from the beginning. Guys I know who became cops were not the sharpest in school.

It would seem that Brian felt guilty for not helping his friend and that's why he placed the subsequent call to the hospital. He saw the ambulance and EMT's there treating him and knew that he'd be at the hospital (probably by the time he got home) which is when he placed the phone call...

THIS ' ACCIDENT ' TOOK THREE LIVES. THE FACT THIS TRAGEDY SEEMS TO BE HAVE SO SLOPPY AN INVESTIGATION SPEAKS VOLUMES ... SOMEONE IS PROTECTING , ANR. , OR OTHERS ... WE , THE TAXPAYERS, WE WHO SEEMINGLY PRIDE OURSELVES & OUR SOCIETY PERMITS A FAMILY TO BE SLOWLY DECIMATED FUNDAMENTALLY BLOODY STINKS. IT GOES ON FAR MORE THAN WE CARE TO ADMIT; TO OURSELVES, ONESELF, & ONE.ANR. IT SAYS TO ME, VERY LOUDLY ... "IF YOU KNOW THE 'RIGHT PEOPLE, HAVE ENOUGH MONEY, YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH MURDER" . CIVILIZATION IS A MERE VANEER. WHAT AN AWFUL SPECIES WE TRULY ARE. LETS FORGET THE STATEMENT "HOW COULD ONE LIVE WITH ONESELF ... PEOPLE DO IT ALL THE TIME ;LAUGHING TO & FRO THE BANK ! IF YOU DON'T AGREE , FINE ... BUT WAKE UP & SMELL THE COFFEE ! FINALLY, WE ARE ALL COMPLICIT B/C WE ALLOW IT TO CONTINUE ... EVERYDAY. CALEB R.

I live in Spokane and this is a sad story. Someone needs to step up and take responsibility for this poor kid's death..

Sounds like one of the teenagers in the car was a cop’s kid.

Russell was a tall kid but hardly imposing, 😂. You're fluffing the kid up as if he was Paul Bunyan, a tall scrawny 8th grader is hardly a tough guy. Sounds like Russell equated height with being tough and inserted himself into situations he shouldn't have. It's sad he was killed but sometimes minding your own business is good for your health.

I went to the same middle school

Hope they catch the bastards who did this!

Multiple teenagers know exactly what occurred. Lazy police dont look into with fresh eyes and technology 🙄

Things that I’ve gathered from this case:
1. People are cowards and will throw their “loved ones” under just to save their own asses. Brian, I’m talking to you babe ;) and everyone else that knows who did this that won’t come forward. Hope you sleep comfortably at night knowing you hold all the answers for this family and you intentionally keep it to yourselves because you’re low life, shitty, waste of space humans <3

2. Spokane Police are completely and utterly incompetent at their jobs and really fumbled this one… nice going assholes.

3. Russell did not deserve to die at the ripe age of 13 and his family does not deserve to go through this after 30 years.

Come forward you cowards and do the right thing. You got to live your life comfortably for over 30 years, and Russ got to lay is his grave longer than he was alive. Come forward or burn in hell (:

Having been born in the same year as Russell it makes me sad to think of all the years he was robbed of.

Out of all the cases covered this one has just stuck with me. :( very sad.

The police laziness in this case is disgusting. Adults killed a 13 year old child and the cops brushed it off as a hit and run. They hit him then backed over him.

The 2 Foster Brothers to me are the likely murderers.

Assuming the blood was the victims, did police or medical say the origin of it? Some insights that I have….. My brother was hit by a drunk driver & the driver wasn’t even aware that he had hit him. My brother was 16 yr old, 6’1’’ and probably 185 pounds. It was at night and he was crossing a large intersection. The vehicle was a 1980’s Buick. At impact, my bro was tossed into the air, he hit the car’s hood and windshield. The driver didn’t apply the breaks, and may have sped up, so my bro continued to flip over the roof. He ended up about 100 feet away from his point of origin. He was knocked out and the drunk driver did not stop. It was so dark out and he was lying motionless in the road that a 2nd car nearly hit him. He was lucky that a person near the intersection saw everything and waived at the 2nd car to get the car to stop. My brother regained consciousness and he told the witness that he had fallen off his ten speed bike and that his friend Jerry was supposed to be following him. He also kept trying to sit up and get up so his “bike” wouldn’t get stolen. They ended up life flighting him and after 3 months in the hospital and a long recovery at home he pulled through. He has no memory of the accident, the witness, the claims about the bike and claims that Jerry was following him. We think he constructed that story because the day before he was delivering his papers, on his bike, and his friend Jerry rode along with him to keep him company. So I say all this in order to say — the victim could have been hit, he could have sat up or at least tried to. He could have taken his shoes socks off and maybe he took his laces out because he was going to use them as a turnicate. He could have crawled to a different location from the impact or landing area. He could have been struck twice — by the same or different vehicles. Him calling out the name of the friend is probably a false memory — I know he was able to say his name and such, but when he was asked what happened he didn’t respond. He was probably very confused and in shock. Recalling your name is much different from trying to recall a traumatic event where you likely went in and out of consciousness. As for the phone call to the hospital — I think maybe someone called the hospital at some point that night, but I just feel it is suspect that the clerk would think this call so important that she/he would tell the family. Even though this event happened in 1988-89 time frame, would the clerk really give out health status information to a caller? If this call was so significant did police obtain the inbound call log to see what number called the hospital? I really don’t think the call happened as it has been portrayed.

Russ, Aaron, Brian and Don. Who remembers when boys had real names?

These hit and run accidents are horrible and nearly impossible to solve.

Could detectives possibly trace or have traced where the call to the hospital came from?

I'd give more credence to the TJ theory. If Russ were dragged, there are ways his shoes and socks would've been separated, and more importantly, the mid thoracic fracture is indeed plausible under those circumstances as well. The kinematics suggest a hypoflexion and break based on the position a tall individual would be in as they were held up and dragged by a vehicle uphill. This guy then serves prison time in a max security prison for violence...???? The logistics of the scene versus what was said could be completely wrong.
Lastly, you can at times, tell people who and where you are with fairly severe head injuries If you are struck and thrown uphill, you may also land flush, not sliding and sustaining road rash as much as blunt force trauma.

Cops did a piss poor job RIP Russell

I'm a little confused about injuries. The broken spine and lacerated kidneys seemed to be the worst and he had internal bleeding--which can come out of the body depending on origin and orifices--but most injuries are bruises..so externally, WHERE was he bleeding from? Mouth & Nose? I'm trying to make sense of the pools of blood and blood on his shoes. I would also like to know a possible order/timeline of injuries because once this kid's spine was broken, he was likely paralyzed from the location of the break, traveling down. He would likely not be able to run, walk, or maybe even fight back at that point. So this kid is over 6ft tall..his lower back injury is about 4ft up his body..4ft tall certainly is high for a vehicle's bumper. I don't think he was hit by a car at all! None of the evidence lines up with that. I think an older brother or a father beat this kid so bad he was paralyzed and the person tried to pass it off as a hit and run and probably hoped a car would hit him and put him out of his paralyzed misery. I think less people were around to witness it than we think. If the kid was hit by a car and landed on his back like he was found, you'd likely see massive damage to the back of his head. If he was beaten there and paralyzed, he'd collapse and likely not flat on his back. Somebody laid the kid like that.

Hearing all these stories of missing kids or kids that are killed back in the day & with cops I think most of them aren't solved because cops back then just didn't do their job and if they did do the job it was incorrectly or rushed just to put a name to say they cracked the case that's why I think half of the killers or the bad guys that they captured our innocent and aren't in the guilty ones ! And most times they excused these kids are just runaways too and they weren't it amazes me so much technology to do so many things that every time you want to catch a criminal etccc on it you can't see it's fuzzyy!

Our Libby Lancer🤍💛🤍 He was such an amazing funny man who was truly just a great guy. Always helped me out with my awful locker. He just knew to open it for me🤍 sadly his murder truly took us all from newly teenagers to his life taken in such a horrible way. I am now 48 yo and still always will remember that he was just like you and I at that age. I have twin sons now age 13~ it’s never left me. His life meant something to those who knew, loved and want justice for his life that was stolen! I’m never going to be able to get past his loss. Stand by me was always my most favorite movie. When this happened, it truly was and still is ALL TOO REAL. He was just happy and I was happy to hear any of his stories he shared riding East Sprague ave on the STA before & after school. His parents and sister deserved closure & his murderer should have been captured as well as spent his time for the crime of taking his life- seems so tribal but TRULY, HOW DOES ONE PERSON THINK HE COULD EVER IMAGINE HOW MUCH TIME IT WOULD TAKE OF THEIR LIFE TO REPENT FOR THE SAKE OF HIS LIGHT AND LOVE HE GAVE TO US ALL FREELY AND IN RETURN WAS~ A PoS that never could amount to the man he was becoming?! Yeah, HE COULDN’T SO I GUESS THATS WHY NOT

Investigate the DNA please

Please bring back the eerie background music. The ambience of the music makes the videos so much more interesting

First clue is Brian. Close friends don't stand off in the shadows while their friend lays there calling out their name in agony. Any other friend would have ran for help to the nearest house. Theres the possibility that brian was walking with Russell at some point close to when the incident happened.

If this was an attack how did the perpetrators know where Russell would be at the time that night? Unless someone notified them where Russell would be after they left the house on the way back to his home. Or maybe Russell was discreetly followed by the guys from the park. Someone might have also known Russells routine and knew the street he would have taken to get home.

Theres too many unusual circumstances to write this off as accident. Shame on the police department at the time. This should be reopened and any surviving witnesses including brian and others should be interviewed again.

Wild.

I lived on 8th and Freya for years.

This happened when I was very young

All of your questions can be answered in this case Mr Pacheco by considering the possibility that the killer is a Spokane cop or a family member of a cop. Probably 80% of unsolved cases in the USA have the stink of dirty cops on them.

Jogging and playing basktball in top-siders?

I can think of another thing that GQ stands for.

How would this person that called the hospital know he'd be there? Was there only one hospital around?

Also, why is a 13 year old walking around past midnight?

Oooh I live near Spokane...the police in Spokane are super shady and corrupt.

Thanks for the excellent summary.

Being a dad myself, I’d I didn’t get proper and necessary justice from local law enforcement I would have had no choice but to seek other means.

Police incompetence. Unbelievable!

It's still so crazy that we dont have any answers all these years later. My Dad was best friends and cousins with Russell. In fact, Russell left my fathers house on his birthday that unfortunate night. Im named after Rusty in his honor. Jesus has you, Russ.