Poulsbo man charged with manslaughter a year after shooting on Tracyton Boulevard

Just more than a year after telling investigators that a 25-year-old man had shot himself before crashing a car along Tracyton Boulevard near Silverdale, a male passenger in the Sept. 23, 2023 crash appeared in Kitsap County Superior Court on Tuesday after being charged with manslaughter.

Zachery Ian Streun of Poulsbo, now 24, was arrested and booked into Kitsap County Jail on Monday, according to county records, and charged with one count of first-degree manslaughter, which includes a maximum penalty of life in prison, for the reckless death of Bradley Michael Joshua Smith last September. Streun's initial statements to law enforcement, accusing Smith of shooting himself, were deemed "implausible and extremely unlikely," according to charging documents.

According to a probable cause statement for Streun's arrest, Kitsap County Sheriff's deputies arrived at a single-vehicle crash on Tracyton Boulevard at NW Selbo Road, between the Fairgrounds and Silverdale, just after 9 p.m. A Subaru WRX, with a manual transmission, was on the side of the road, and appeared to have struck a power pole and series of mailboxes. Streun was sitting outside the car, deputies wrote, clearly in pain and with blood on his shirt. He told deputies that the man in the car, Smith, had killed himself, and was visibly upset, the report states.

Deputies found Smith dead in the front seat of the Subaru, with a gunshot wound on the right side of his head. Streun was helped into an ambulance, and an hour later spoke to a KCSO detective. Streun said that the two men were friends and had been at a birthday party at a Silverdale restaurant that evening. The report notes that Streun appeared intoxicated, and he confirmed drinking beer and hard alcohol at two different locations, and said the two intended to go to a third restaurant, on Silvedale Way. They had incorrectly gone to the wrong location, off Fairgrounds Road, and were returning to Silverdale when the crash occurred. Streun claimed Smith had waved a loaded gun in the car while the two were listening to music, and then shot himself. Streun said that he had not felt threatened by Smith, who he knew as a responsible gun owner, and admitted he had handled the gun in the car as well.

Detectives found a Smith and Wesson 9 mm handgun in the car, which was registered to Smith and had a loaded magazine and a round in the chamber, sitting beneath the driver's seat. A small bag of drugs was also found, on the passenger side of the car, as well as other luggage, as Streun told detectives Smith planned to move to Florida the next day.

An autopsy conducted two days later, on Sept. 25 by Kitsap County Medical Examiner Lindsay Harle, found small abrasions known as "powder tattooing" around the victim's wound, made by gunpowder particles that can indicate the distance a shot was fired from, and Harle said Smith may have been shot by as far as 2 feet away. Detectives wrote that the finding led them to request further testing to determine what distance Smith was shot from.

A forensics team in California was contacted to study the shooting and evidence, and in May a scientist determined Smith was shot at a distance of between 10 and 15 inches. In June KCSO detectives, using a Subaru WRX offered by a local dealership, recreated the shooting with three rods, of 10, 12 and 15 inches in length, attached to the muzzle of the gun recovered from the scene. Two detectives that approximately matched Smith's height and weight attempted to pull the trigger at each of the distances, to mimic a suicide attempt. Neither could do so at 15 inches, and even at 10 inches each detective noted the difficulty in squeezing the trigger, and that it felt "unnatural."

They also tested the gun while sitting in the passenger's seat, aimed toward the driver at the three distances, and wrote in court documents, "From this position I could easily squeeze the trigger with no strain or additional effort."

In September an expert, Dr. Allen Tencer of the Harborview Biomechanics Laboratory, also concluded that it would not have been possible for Smith to pull the trigger of a gun pointed at himself while in the car, writing it is "unlikely he fired the gun at himself."

Additionally, Smith's family testified that Smith was left-handed, and his right hand would have been on the stick shift of the Subaru as it was moving. They also told detectives their son was "militant" about gun safety and had taken firearms safety courses.

Smith's family also provided detectives photos from a Snapchat video, apparently made earlier on the night of Sept. 23, 2023 by Streun, that show him playing with a gun that matched the one in the car. Streun, who is dressed the same in the video as he was seen after the crash, is shown in court documents as pointing the barrel of the gun through the zipper of his pants, and a second Snapchat image shows Streun holding the same gun in August.

Streun was scheduled to make an initial appearance at 3 p.m. in Kitsap County Superior Court. Jail records show he is still held on $500,000 bail.

This story will be updated to include Streun's plea during his scheduled arraignment.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Poulsbo man charged with manslaughter a year after shooting on Tracyton Boulevard