A King County judge has issued an arrest warrant for Daniel Tyrelle McCullough, 35, the man accused of slashing a King County sheriff's deputy with a knife during an arrest outside a Shoreline supermarket, after McCullough failed to appear for his arraignment, KOMO News reported on Thursday, November 12. McCullough had been released from jail less than 24 hours after his October 30 arrest, when a district court judge set his bail at $25,000 — a third of the $75,000 prosecutors had requested — and the missed court date has now pushed that bail to $150,000 and put deputies back on the street looking for him.

Source: KOMO News, reported Nov 12, 2026

Court records cited by KOMO show the court raised McCullough's bail to $150,000 and issued the warrant after the missed arraignment. He faces two felony counts — second-degree assault and felony harassment — and every allegation in the case remains unproven: McCullough is presumed innocent unless a court decides otherwise. KIRO 7 News reported that authorities are actively searching for him after the missed court date.

Source: KIRO 7 News, Nov 2026

What happened at the Shoreline Thriftway on October 30

The charges stem from a confrontation on October 30 at the Thriftway Market in Shoreline, on Ballinger Way, where McCullough had parked his bus in the lot for several days, according to a King County Sheriff's Office report summarised in the reporting. Investigators said a store manager told McCullough the bus would be towed if he did not move it. In charging documents, prosecutors allege McCullough threatened to slit the manager's throat if the bus was towed and threatened to kill the officers who responded. Store surveillance cameras recorded the exchange, according to the sheriff's office report.

Deputies who responded were still developing a plan to contact McCullough when he came out of the store, walked away and then ran, the report says. Body-camera audio captures deputies giving repeated commands to stop and get on the ground, with warnings that he could be tased. One deputy can be heard trying to talk him down by name: “Daniel, you remember me, right? Let's talk about this.”

Moments later, deputies are heard shouting, “He's got a knife! He's got a knife! Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” Charging documents state that McCullough turned during the pursuit and swung a knife at a deputy, leaving a cut of three to five inches on the deputy's arm. After deputies ordered him to stay down, a voice on the recording asks, “Am I under arrest?” A deputy answers: “You're under arrest for felony harassment and trying to stab me.” The deputy's injury was to the arm; the reporting does not describe it as life-threatening.

The bail decision at the centre of the case

The case has become a local argument about bail because of what happened next. McCullough was arrested and booked into jail on October 30 and released less than 24 hours later on the $25,000 bail. In the charging documents, prosecutor Ian Michels-Slettvet had already warned against exactly that outcome, writing: “The State does not believe that $25,000, the amount set by the district court judge, reflects the danger that the defendant poses to the community.” Prosecutors had asked for $75,000, citing public-safety concerns, FOX 13 Seattle reported in its earlier coverage of the arrest.

That sequence — a deputy injured, a low bail against prosecutors' advice, a release inside a day, and then a no-show in court — is why a two-week-old arrest is back at the top of Seattle-area news. Supporters of tighter bail practice say the case shows the risk of under-priced release in violent-felony cases; the court system, for its part, sets bail on the facts and record presented at a first appearance, and the higher $150,000 figure now attached to the warrant reflects the failure to appear as well as the original charges.

The setting: Shoreline and the King County Sheriff's Office

Shoreline is a city of King County immediately north of Seattle, and like several King County cities it receives its police service from the King County Sheriff's Office under contract — which is why sheriff's deputies, not a city police force, answered the call at the Thriftway and why a county court is handling the case. The October 30 call began as a parking and trespass dispute over a bus left in a supermarket lot for days, the kind of low-level complaint deputies handle daily, and escalated, on the prosecution's account, into threats and a knife attack within minutes of deputies arriving.

For Punjabi and South Asian families across the Seattle metro area — in Shoreline, Seattle, Kent, Renton and the wider King County suburbs, many of them working in trucking, warehouses, fuel stations and small retail — the case is a neighbourhood story as much as a court story: the supermarket lot, the deputies who patrol it, and the question of how quickly an accused violent offender should be back on the street are all part of daily local life.

What happens next

The warrant means any deputy or officer who locates McCullough can arrest him on sight, and on arrest he would be held on the new $150,000 bail and brought before the court for the arraignment he missed, where the assault and harassment charges would be formally read and a plea entered. The underlying case would then move through King County Superior Court, where the body-camera and store surveillance recordings described in the charging documents are likely to be central evidence for both sides. Awaaz Punjab will update this story when the sheriff's office confirms an arrest.