Man accused of killing woman in Tacoma’s North End was under DOC supervision, charges say

A man now charged with fatally shooting a woman near Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue business district earlier this month was still on community custody after spending more than a decade in prison for robbery, court records show.

Bobby Joe Ezra Plain, 37, faced arraignment Wednesday afternoon in Pierce County Superior Court on two counts of second-degree murder and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm.

Commissioner Craig Adams set bail at $1 million. According to a pretrial services report, Plain was on Department of Corrections supervision through a Pierce County gang unit. Records show he has three prior felony convictions.

Plain was charged four days after the May 15 homicide of 28-year-old Chantelle Grayson, but detectives weren’t able to find him at the time, and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest. The Tacoma Police Department announced Tuesday that detectives arrested him at a business in the city.

He was one of 34 defendants charged in 2010 with criminal conspiracy charges in connection to more than 50 felonies, including attempted murder, robbery and drive-by shooting in and around Tacoma since 2008, according to court records and archive stories from The News Tribune. Local, state and federal authorities asserted then that the defendants were members of the Hilltop Crips street gang.

Plain pleaded guilty the next year to first-degree robbery and second-degree assault, and he was sentenced to 17 years in prison, records show. He was accused of beating a man with a gun in December 2008 outside a diner on South Hosmer Street, then stealing cash, a gold chain and the man’s firearm. Prosecutors wrote in charging documents that he was released in May 2022 and was on home detention until Jan. 30.

Grayson was killed about two blocks from 6th Avenue near the 700 block of North Junett Street. Charging papers don’t lay out a clear motive, but a man who was with Grayson that evening reportedly told police they had been driving around Tacoma in a Lexus and went to a fast-food restaurant on 6th Avenue before parking on Junett Street.

He gave detectives different information about what led up to the shooting in two interviews, according to the declaration for determination of probable cause, but he said he saw Plain shoot Grayson with a silver handgun after the two argued. He said Plain fled in a gray Acura sedan. The man identified Plain as the gunman in a photo montage provided by detectives.

Detectives obtained surveillance video from the restaurant, and it reportedly showed a gray Acura in the parking that appeared to follow a Lexus after it went to the drive-thru.

Investigators learned Plain was still being supervised by the Department of Corrections, and on May 16, a DOC officer contacted detectives, records state. The officer said Plain had a check-in at 11 a.m. at an office in Parkland, but he appeared an hour-and-a-half late with his mother accompanying him. Plain allegedly said he was late because his property had been stolen from his girlfriend’s car or apartment the night before.