Man who ran over 91-year-old, killing her, has long felony record

When Marie Fite saw her neighbors in Seattle's Highlander condominium building, she was quick to greet them with a smile and a quip about her age.

Fite started the routine a few years ago, when she turned 88, neighbors said. She would say "Hello," announce her age and follow up by saying, "Can you believe that?"

In the more than three decades that Fite lived in the Capitol Hill building, neighbors said hers was a familiar face, someone known for her color-coordinated outfits, often topped off with a hat and overcoat. She proudly boasted that at 91 she didn't need a cane to go for her daily walks.

Fite was on a walk Monday afternoon when she was struck by a pickup just blocks from her building. She died from her injuries.

Police say the man who hit her tried to pull her from beneath his pickup. Failing that, he then walked away from the crash, they say.

The driver, Shawn Shipp, 34, was charged Thursday with vehicular homicide and driving with a suspended license. He's being held in the King County Jail on $500,000 bail, King County prosecutors said.

According to charging papers, Shipp was backing his pickup into a parking space near Harvard Avenue East and East Thomas Street when he struck Fite and drove over her, authorities said. Shipp, a convicted sex offender with a lengthy criminal record, then tried to pull the woman out from underneath his truck but was stopped by a witness, police said.

Shipp then walked away as sirens approached, according to charging papers. He returned a short time later and was arrested.

Seattle police Detective Mike Korner wrote in his police report that after his pickup knocked Fite to the ground, Shipp "continued to back up." Korner said that Shipp "drove over [her] and came to a stop within the parking stall."

Fite died that night at Harborview Medical Center.

A blood-alcohol test found that Shipp had a blood-alcohol level of 0.16, twice the legal limit, after the crash, according to police.

Shipp, police said, denied being drunk, instead saying he had taken a 500- milligram Vicodin pill several hours earlier. The results of a test to determine whether he was impaired by narcotics is still pending, charging paperwork said.

Shipp has convictions for first-degree child rape, twice failing to register as a sex offender, assault, motor-vehicle theft, drug possession, vehicle prowling, drunken driving, driving with a suspended license and speeding 28 miles over the posted limit, according to the King County Prosecutor's Office.

Fite spent much of her life in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, first living with her parents in an apartment before buying her own condo next door at the Highlander, one neighbor said. Neighbors remember Fite as friendly, independent and intensely private.

"She was a sweetheart," said Kathy Beckenbauer, a retiree who lives in the building.

Fite told neighbors that her three younger brothers were her world, and referred to them as "her boys." When the last of her siblings died last month, she was heartbroken, they say.

One neighbor, another retiree who asked that her name not be used, said that she saw Fite on Sunday at the intersection of Harvard Avenue East and East Republican Street. She asked how she was coping with her brother's death and Fite said she was distressed.

"She said she was all confused and upset and walked off," the woman said

When Beckenbauer and other residents in the 63-unit building heard about the accident and that a 91-year-old woman had died they knew it was Fite.

Beckenbauer and another neighbor knocked on her door and rang the outdoor buzzer, hoping they were wrong. They learned Thursday that their longtime neighbor had died.

A spokesman at the King County Medical Examiner's Office said that next-of-kin have been contacted, but it's unclear whether Fite's relatives still live in the Seattle-area.

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com