A Seattle homicide suspect who authorities say was mistakenly released from a California jail has been arrested after spending months on the run.

Isaiah Andrews, 20, is suspected of shooting and killing a man in the Northgate neighborhood on October 15, 2025, Seattle Police said. The victim, 20-year-old Theodore Wheeler IV, was found in the parking lot of a hotel just before 5 p.m. with a gunshot wound to the chest.

Police and firefighters attempted life-saving measures, but the victim died at the scene. It was not immediately clear what led to the shooting.

Andrews was arrested three days later, about 800 miles away in Antioch, California. His arrest came after a vehicle chase involving several police agencies, authorities said.

He spent just three days in jail before staff “mistakenly released” him on October 21.

Authorities did not say what prompted them to make this mistake.

However, after realizing that Andrews was no longer in custody, the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office launched a search for him in the surrounding area, but he was not found.

Andrews spent over five months on the run before the U.S. Marshals Service arrested him Wednesday in St. Louis, Missouri. He was taken into custody without incident, police said.

Officials will extradite Andrews to Washington state on a first-degree murder warrant, police said.

The mother of Wheeler, the homicide victim, told King 5 in October that authorities never told her about Andrews’ accidental release.

“I’m sad, I’m hurt, I’m disappointed. I feel like they don’t care. Nobody has notified me,” she said at the time.

“They shouldn’t have people in the field that are going to let something like that happen. Never, never, never should they have anybody in that field that is negligent,” she said. “I want someone to step up and take responsibility. They’re putting my family in jeopardy.

She described her son as being the “glue to the family.”

“Everybody’s hurt. Everybody’s hurt,” she said. “I still want justice for my baby. I do. He didn’t deserve that.”