Bellevue, Washington – On Friday, a man allegedly called 911 to ambush responding officers. According to charging documents and prosecutors, a 38-year-old man called 911 from the Bellevue Transit Center and reported a domestic violence incident that investigators now say never happened. He did not ask for an ambulance. He asked for “an officer or two.” Minutes later, as two Bellevue police officers stood with him in the busy downtown transit hub, the man allegedly launched an ambush with a kitchen knife.
Prosecutors allege the man, Mohamed Morray Bangura, spoke calmly for several seconds, gesturing as if to point out the dispute he had reported. Then, the documents say, he unzipped a pocket, drew a knife and lunged with an ice pick style stabbing motion at one officer. When that officer avoided the blow, prosecutors say Bangura turned and slashed the right side of the second officer’s face, then stabbed him twice more as he went down.
The injured officer suffered a six inch facial laceration along with a dislocated shoulder and a broken clavicle, according to charging documents and the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The accompanying officer fired multiple rounds, striking the suspect, court records say, before both officers pulled back. Both the officer and the suspect were transported to a hospital.
Dr. Travis Yates has been studying the characteristics of violent offenders for decades, and he calls the ambush attack against the officers difficult to defend but not impossible. Yates says that a common theme in violence against law enforcement is the declarations made by the suspects. In this case, it was vital for dispatch to note the odd nature of the 911 call and relay it to the officers.
“Prediction of violence is done through what is called pre-incident indicators. In this case, the dispatcher would have known that most victims or witnesses of domestic violence don’t simply ask for ‘an officer or two’ and it’s vital that those oddities are relayed to the officers,” Yates said.
Yates recalled a similar call early in his law enforcement career, in which a man called 911 and said he had warrants and wanted a single police officer to respond. In that case, Yates asked for multiple officers to respond with him, and his instincts were right. The suspect was waiting in the driveway, ready to fight, and his first words were, “I only said one officer.”
In a public statement summarizing the charges, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said the case reflects “the deliberateness of this attack,” alleging that the defendant lured officers to his location by making the bogus 911 call and acted out of animus tied to a prior interaction involving a different Bellevue officer. Prosecutors say the defendant filed a complaint against that unrelated officer the day before the stabbing and, instead of letting that process play out, “chose to arm himself with a knife and assault two other innocent, unwitting officers who thought they were responding” to a domestic violence call.
Bangura has been charged with assault in the first degree with a deadly weapon enhancement and assault in the second degree with a deadly weapon enhancement, prosecutors said. The first degree count relates to the officer who was stabbed. The second-degree count relates to the second officer, whom prosecutors say was assaulted under Washington law, even though he was not stabbed. Prosecutors asked the court to hold the defendant on $5 million bail.
The incident is also being investigated under Washington’s independent officer-involved shooting framework. Bellevue police said the case was transferred to the King County Independent Force Investigation Team for the remainder of the investigation, in line with state law and local agreements.
