Wood
March marked four years since Brent Wood was found beaten to death along E Olive Way behind the Broadway Rite Aid. Legal proceedings to try the man accused of his murder continue.
Alexander Jay was charged in August of 2022 in the deadly beating of the 31-year-old unhoused artist. Jay has remained incarcerated and hospitalized through court ordered efforts to restore his competency for trial.
In November of 2024, according to court records, a stay on the case was lifted as experts determined Jay’s competency “restored.”
A trial in the case has been continued multiple times. Last week’s continuance puts the case on track for a June start.
According to county records, Jay is also charged in two separate assault cases for which he has yet to be tried.
Jay was already jailed when he was charged in the murder in 2022 after his arrest in a brutal beating of a woman at the International District light rail station.
Prosecutors describe Wood’s death as a terrible attack from behind, saying police believe Jay bludgeoned the man to death with a piece of rebar, fracturing his skull and leaving him to die in a pool of blood. According to the charges, DNA analysis linked Jay to the rebar used to kill Wood. Police also said the analysis showed Wood’s blood was found on the boots Jay was wearing when he was arrested.
Friends told CHS Wood was an artist who was mourned by many in the Capitol Hill community including the small businesses where he would do odd jobs and the fellow artists who got to know him. Wood had an “unwavering artistic view of the world around” and “immediate compassion and love for everyone he met,” one friend said.
Wood would sometimes find work at neighborhood businesses including Twice Sold Tales.
Wood’s killing was one of two murders of young, gay, homeless men on Capitol Hill that month.
Jonathan Caradonna was stabbed and killed on a Saturday morning that March on Capitol Hill’s 13th Ave E in a case the Seattle Police Department has not solved.
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