TUKWILA, Washington – The third suspect in the 2022 murder of a shopper at the Southcenter mall in Tukwila has pleaded guilty.

According to documents filed this week in King County Superior Court, Kevin Diaz-Bautista, 18, of Auburn, pleaded guilty in juvenile court to first-degree manslaughter and unlawful possession of a firearm. The agreement dismisses adult court charges of murder and theft of a motor vehicle.

A judge ordered Diaz-Bautista to remain in the Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families’ juvenile rehabilitation center until he is 20 and six months old; at which point he will be released on parole. According to the agreement, probation supervision will last six months until his 21st birthday.

Diaz-Bautista, who was 16 at the time of the murder, is the latest of three defendants to plead guilty in the death of Christopher Wesolowicz, who was shot multiple times after interrupting a car break-in in the mall’s parking garage. Wesolowicz’s wife, Mary Wesolowicz, was shot in the hand during the incident.

Earlier this summer, Cristopher Ruvalcaba, 21, and Joe Aguilera, 19, were sentenced to 12 and 10 years in prison, respectively, after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.

According to the charges, on the night of November 18, 2022, Ruvalcaba, Aguilera and Diaz-Bautista drove to the mall in a stolen Hyundai and parked next to the Wesolowiczs’ SUV.

Surveillance video shows the couple returning to their vehicle and interrupting the burglary. Christopher Wesolowicz jumped onto the windshield of the stolen Hyundai, after which Ruvalcaba and Aguilera fired at least eight shots through the windshield of the stolen Hyundai.

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Christopher Wesolowicz was shot multiple times in the back and died at the scene. According to the charges, Mary Wesolowicz was struck in the hand.

Aguilera, Ruvalcaba and Diaz-Bautista fled the mall in the stolen Hyundai, which was later recovered by Renton detectives.

An Auburn detective identified Diaz-Bautista from a surveillance camera image that captured his face.

RELATED: 16-year-old boy among three charged with murder in fatal shooting at Southcenter mall

Investigators began investigating Diaz-Bautista and obtained a search warrant for his social media accounts. In one message, Diaz-Bautista wrote to Ruvalcaba after seeing Mary Wesolowicz in an interview on the news, the indictment says.

“Why the hell lie…she said her husband got hit by a car?”

Investigators said only the suspects knew Christopher Wesolowicz jumped onto the stolen Hyundai rather than being hit by it while fleeing.

Other crimes were also mentioned in the trio’s messages this week.

“In Ruvalcaba’s statement to (Diaz-Bautista), he stated that they had been in the news three times in one week,” the Tukwila police report states.

Investigators said the weapons used to kill Wesolowicz were linked to other shootings in Algona, Kent and Renton.

According to the indictments, all three suspects are known members of the Pacific North Line Mob (PNL).

In an interview with KOMO News on Wednesday, King County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Casey McNerthney said the plea agreement and sentence were appropriate given the circumstances of the crime.

“Diaz-Bautista was the accomplice,” McNerthney said. “This defendant did not have a weapon and was not the shooter. “Who has the weapon, who shot and who did not is certainly a mitigating factor that we expected from the defense.”

McNerthney said that because of Diaz-Bautista’s age, the sentence might not have been different even if he had been convicted in adult court.

“A lot of people will also look at this and say, ‘Wouldn’t he have had more time in adult court?’ “Well the answer is no, that’s very unlikely given the circumstances,” McNerthney said. “When a juvenile is convicted and sentenced in adult court, juveniles can, and often do, receive the same range of juvenile sentences that they would have in juvenile court. This ability for judges to go below adult sentencing limits, even in adult court, is made possible by a 2017 lawsuit from the state Supreme Court.

The conviction and sentencing of Diaz-Bautista ends the nearly two-year process of determining responsibility for the murder in court.

“We have three defendants here – the shooters were charged and convicted as adults, and the third, who was not armed, was convicted of accessory after the fact manslaughter and will remain in juvenile hall and on probation as long as state law allows,” McNerthney said .