Oak Harbor teen charged in rare Island County juvenile kidnapping case

Kidnapping charges are uncommon in Island County Superior Court, and prosecutors say this Oak Harbor case may be even rarer because the defendant is a juvenile. The 17-year-old boy was charged May 1 with one count of second-degree kidnapping, tied to an alleged incident around April 8. Under Washington law, second-degree kidnapping means intentionally abducting another person under circumstances that do not amount to first-degree kidnapping. If convicted, he faces a standard juvenile sentencing range of 52 to 65 weeks of confinement.

The case escalated after a 15-year-old girl called 911 just before 1 a.m. April 10 and reported that she had been held at gunpoint and beaten. Deputies and Oak Harbor police officers responded and found her in the boy’s bedroom. The boy ran outside when officers arrived, then came back shortly afterward. The girl later told investigators that the boy and another teen were both armed with guns and had held her captive at a trailer on the property the day before the call. She said one of the teens pointed a gun at her head and that both of them punched her at different times.

The girl also said she recorded the boy assaulting her on her phone, but the deputy later wrote that the video was not clear enough to identify a firearm. Those allegations have not been tested in a trial, and the kidnapping charge remains an accusation. Still, the details already placed the case among the more serious juvenile matters to move through the county system, especially because it involves alleged violence, a weapon and a young victim who reached authorities in real time.

At the April 10 hearing, Judge Carolyn Cliff found probable cause for second-degree kidnapping and fourth-degree assault. Deputy Prosecutor Amy Mirabile asked for $10,000 bail, saying that amount was large for a juvenile case but arguing the boy posed a threat to the community, especially if he had a gun, and noting that he was allegedly on probation when the crime occurred. He was already being held in juvenile detention on a 30-day sentence for a probation violation in another case, and the report says he had been booked into juvenile jail 10 times since 2023.

The case will continue through Island County’s felony court system, where the prosecuting attorney’s office, led by Greg Banks and six deputy prosecutors, handles serious criminal cases in Superior Court. For Oak Harbor, the matter adds another youth violence file to a docket that local judges and prosecutors have been forced to confront with increasing frequency.