The two dogs wouldn’t stop barking.
On a chilly night in February, Yumiko Suzuki was alone in her home in a leafy Seattle suburb studded with parks, evergreen trees and “children at play” signs. The wife of retired Mariners great Ichiro, Yumiko heard their dogs barking and checked a live security camera feed. There, she saw that a window on a kitchen door had been shattered, and the door was open.
Suzuki tried to phone for help, but the calls didn’t go through. She heard noise outside the primary bedroom. She locked herself in the room. A tall man wearing a hooded sweatshirt, headlamp and black gloves repeatedly tried to open the door. It didn’t budge. He pummeled the door with kicks. The jamb broke. So did the handle. Suzuki threw her weight against the door.
The masked intruder reached through a gap in the door and doused Suzuki’s face and chest with pepper spray. She shoved a security bar into place on the door, screamed “Call the police!” and pressed a panic button for the home’s alarm system.
The intruder eventually fled through the home’s front door with a stolen Louis Vuitton satchel, backpack and purse. He jumped a gate and escaped in a Jeep Grand Cherokee as Issaquah police officers raced to the scene.
The terror that unfolded that night wasn’t an isolated incident, but part of a three-month burglary spree where a loosely connected crew targeted some of the Seattle area’s best-known current and former athletes. They struck Mariners pitcher Luis Castillo’s home twice, burglarized Suzuki, Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell, former Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman and a home shared by Mariners center fielder Julio Rodriguez and Reign FC forward Jordyn Huitema.
The crew cased potential targets. They kicked down doors and crashed through windows. They wielded a frequency jammer to disrupt security systems. They carried pepper spray and, on at least one occasion, a pistol that appeared to have been modified for fully automatic fire. They didn’t seem to care if anyone was home. In all, they made off with more than $700,000 in luxury watches, jewelry and designer leather goods from the six athlete burglaries.
The effort to stop the crew sprawled across nine jurisdictions. The FBI also contributed, and Sherman provided a crucial tip. Brian Jordan, a Renton Police Department detective who played a leading role in the investigation, likened the search for the culprits to navigating a spider web.
“With the level of sophistication,” Jordan said, “these guys were hard to catch.”
More than a decade ago, in the aftermath of winning a state basketball championship as a forward with Seattle powerhouse Rainier Beach High, Patrick Maisonet tweeted an admonition to “Just Remain Real.” A few days later, according to a court filing, he stole a Seahawks decal from a Walmart, punched a loss-prevention officer in the mouth and shoved another to the ground.
Maisonet, now 29, has had at least a dozen warrants issued for his arrest in the last 16 years, along with convictions for assault, burglary and kidnapping. In one incident, he exchanged gunshots with another car, crashed his vehicle, carjacked a passerby, then threatened to shoot the driver if they didn’t flee from police. Prosecutors cited Maisonet’s “unapologetically dangerous and violent offenses” and the “extreme danger” he posed to the community.
In August 2023, Maisonet and another man tased an unresisting robbery victim for 30 seconds while stealing his wallet, phone and jewelry. When authorities reviewed Maisonet’s cell phone, they found an internet search history that, in hindsight, hinted at the trouble to come: “ichiro suzuki house” and “ichiro suzuki jewelry.”
Like Maisonet, Earl Riley IV grew up on Seattle’s basketball courts. He’s eight years younger, better known as “Skip” and has “chosen one” tattooed above his left eyebrow. His YouTube highlight videos show a diminutive point guard with an electric first step.
“He would have liked to play professionally,” a counselor at Seattle’s Franklin High School said in a court filing. “He was motivated by that goal. He would get passionate about it.”
Barry Jones, who coached Riley for a Seattle-area prep team during the 2021-22 season, recalled him as a leader, a “very genuine person” and “a kid that’s super-talented in multiple areas beyond just physical gifts or entertainment value.”
That spring, however, Riley was charged with second-degree rape as a juvenile. He later pleaded guilty to third-degree rape and was sentenced to 30 days of detention and ordered not to contact the victim. While on pretrial release in that case, he robbed four people at gunpoint during an hour-long spree in August 2023.
Riley, who rapped under the name DG Skip, seemed to reference the experience in a song he’s credited with co-authoring: “Late nights, I was droppin’ tears, sittin’ in my cell / Outta sight, so I’m outta mind and they ain’t send no mail.”
His attorney sought a mental health alternative in the robbery case, writing in a February sentencing memorandum that Riley has “lived in a constant state of fight or flight for years” because of “community-based traumas and those he suffered at home.” He “has been shot – and shot at many times” and jumped from a moving car to avoid gunfire, according to the filing.
“I want to do better. I don’t want to live like this. I need help,” Riley said in the document. He added: “I feel like a goldfish in a shark tank in (jail).”
During a Feb. 7 hearing, King County Superior Court Judge Sandra Widlan praised the involved attorneys for showing Riley wasn’t “the person on the day of the crime” but “smart and bright, warm, caring” with “so much that you can give back to the community and have a full life if you’re given this opportunity.” She granted the alternative. It suspended a prison sentence that could have ranged from 51 to 68 months on the condition that he undergo therapy and not break the law, among other requirements. Riley got out of jail at 7:05 p.m.
Two hours and 38 minutes later, two masked men – one wearing a camouflage jacket and the other with a headlamp and black gloves – broke through a sliding glass door at Castillo’s Issaquah home. Security cameras captured the first of the six athlete burglaries. The intruders exited the front door with two Louis Vuitton totes and left in a Grand Cherokee.
Two days later, a lone assailant struck the Suzuki residence.
Shortly before midnight on March 24, two masked men broke through a living room window and into the home of Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell in a suburb north of Seattle. No one was home. Edmonds police officers found a trail of broken glass leading to the primary bedroom. It had been ransacked; the mattress was turned over, cabinets opened, drawers rifled through. Missing items included a distinctive Rolex.
The burglary wasn’t discovered until March 26 when a man doing yardwork noticed the front door ajar. The reporting party, whose name is redacted in the police report, asked authorities to delay notifying Snell because he had “the biggest game of his life tomorrow” when he debuted for the Dodgers.
Two days later, the same night Castillo pitched five innings for the Mariners in a loss to the Athletics at T-Mobile Park, two masked men broke into his home again. At least one family member was present. The intruders escaped in a Grand Cherokee.
As the Mariners played the Athletics on March 29, several men wearing hoodies approached the home of Edgar Martinez, Mariners Hall of Famer and the team’s director of hitting strategy. They didn’t enter the house and abruptly left in a Grand Cherokee.
At 12:43 a.m., three masked men burst through a window and into the home of retired Seahawks cornerback and “Thursday Night Football” commentator Richard Sherman in a different Seattle suburb. He wasn’t there. His wife and children were.
House being robbed at gun point with my family in it isn’t what anyone wants for a birthday gift. Scary situation that my Wife handled masterfully and kept my kids safe. If anyone has any info that can help find these people please reach out. pic.twitter.com/HSHPiRHuoP
— Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) March 31, 2025
Another Video if anyone recognizes them or has any info please reach out pic.twitter.com/sY4lqLgTF7
— Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) March 31, 2025
One of the intruders stormed into an upstairs bedroom where Ashley Moss-Sherman was with her two children and a young nephew. She shouted that she was going to get a gun.
“Get out of my house!” Moss-Sherman screamed while on the phone with a 911 dispatcher. “I will shoot! I will shoot! I will shoot!”
Down the hall, her cousin was in another room with his two children when two men suddenly appeared. One of them – short, slender and wearing a black jacket – pointed a pistol and demanded to know Sherman’s whereabouts. The pistol appeared to be a Glock that had been modified for fully automatic fire. The cousin begged the man not to point it at the children.
The intruders made off in a Grand Cherokee with several watches worth more than $100,000.
A month later, around 9:45 p.m. on May 1, three masked men broke into the home of Rodriguez and Huitema. The men had a jammer that seemed to disable the security system and carried pepper spray and a dolly to move heavy objects.
Rodriguez was not home. Huitema, a gold medalist with the 2020 Canadian Olympic soccer team, locked herself in a bathroom and called 911.
“Please, quick,” she whispered. A few seconds passed. “They’re smashing stuff.” Another 30 seconds. “Please, they’re coming. They’re coming close.”
The men broke through the deadbolted bedroom door, ransacked the room and took almost $200,000 worth of purses and jewelry.
Mercer Island police officers responding to the call saw a Grand Cherokee speed away. An officer heard two loud bangs from the vehicle. Authorities recovered a shell casing nearby.
They couldn’t stop bragging.
In the midst of the spree, Riley wore Snell’s distinctive Rolex while fanning $100 bills in front of his face in a photo posted to social media. A few days after turning 21, he posed for more photos with two thick stacks of cash in a restaurant a couple of doors down from a jewelry store that would attract the attention of law enforcement. He posted a different photo pantomiming holding a pistol: “No 9-5s I’m kicking doors …”
A man law enforcement believes to be Maisonet boasted about “being in the major leagues” and “being in the dugout” in a call with an inmate at the King County Correctional Facility on April 13.
In a call with a different inmate, the man believed to be Maisonet said, “I’m just f—ing with baseball,” a comment law enforcement interpreted as “bragging about his exploits.”
Five days after the Huitema-Rodriguez burglary, Sherman contacted a King County sheriff’s detective. He said three friends in Seattle’s “underground” had recently encountered Riley and two other men at a Seattle club. They had a significant amount of cash that they claimed came from selling watches that had belonged to Sherman.
After a burglary on May 10 when the homeowner – not an athlete – shot at the assailants with an AR-15, officers discovered a drone that had fallen out of the Grand Cherokee as it escaped. Law enforcement found Riley’s fingerprints on it and an instruction manual. Maisonet’s fingerprints were eventually identified on the manual, too.
Law enforcement nabbed Riley – along with a stolen Glock pistol tucked in his waistband – on May 22 after a brief foot chase through a hamburger restaurant. During a search of his grandparents’ Seattle home, officers found a bag stolen from Snell and a tote taken from Castillo. A red and black duffle bag that resembled the one captured in security footage from several burglaries was there, too. Officers discovered a blue suitcase belonging to Castillo at the home of Riley’s mother. A camouflage jacket matching the one worn by an intruder during the first Castillo burglary was in the Grand Cherokee.
Riley told detectives he bought the Jeep a couple of weeks earlier from a “crackhead” for an unknown amount of money and said he didn’t remember where the stolen items in his grandparents’ house came from. When a detective said he was facing a significant prison sentence, Riley responded: “That’s what lawyers are for.”
He was charged in four of the athlete burglaries – Snell, Castillo No. 2, Sherman and Huitema/Rodriguez – along with eluding police in a separate incident and the burglary where the drone was left behind. Location data put his cell phones in the vicinity of the four charged athlete burglaries around the time they occurred.
On June 7 – with Riley in jail – two men busted into the Seattle home owned by Benjamin Haggerty. The man better known as the rapper Macklemore wasn’t home. The intruders pepper-sprayed a nanny twice, shouted “f— Macklemore” and stole tens of thousands of dollars in jewelry, sunglasses and leather goods. The headline-grabbing assault resembled the athlete burglaries.
Two search warrants found a common number – later linked to Maisonet – in the vicinity of the Suzuki and Castillo burglaries in February, as well as an earlier break-in that fit the same pattern. Though he switched phones at least seven times since November, investigators eventually connected location data from the devices to most of the athlete burglaries and the Macklemore break-in.
When members of the King County Sheriff’s Office, Renton police and Seattle police arrested Maisonet and searched his home on Aug. 21, they found Louis Vuitton bags taken from athletes, two stolen firearms and a red bag emblazoned with the name of a Seattle jewelry store.
Three of Maisonet’s phones had called the store’s owner. Law enforcement searched the store six days later. Authorities discovered numerous stolen items – including Macklemore’s championship rings from the Seahawks and Sounders – as well as a watch belonging to Sherman and Snell’s distinctive Rolex. The store owner was arrested.
Maisonet was charged in five of the six athlete burglaries – both Castillo break-ins, Suzuki, Snell and Sherman – along with the Macklemore heist. He faces a slew of other charges, including escaping custody and robbing a jewelry store.
“When you connect all of these pieces – the phones, the stolen property, the GPS data, the clothing, the jewelry sales, and the identifications – there is only one conclusion: Patrick Maisonet is responsible for these burglaries,” Jordan, the Renton detective, wrote in the charging papers.
Maisonet and Riley have pleaded not guilty. Riley’s attorney declined to comment; Maisonet’s attorney didn’t respond to requests. During Maisonet’s arraignment, he repeatedly gave the middle finger to television cameras and shouted expletives.
The two men are jailed at the King County Correctional Facility in downtown Seattle. It’s about a 20-minute walk from T-Mobile Park, home of the Mariners, and Lumen Field, where the Seahawks and Reign FC play. Maisonet is scheduled for trial next month – he’s awaiting a ruling on whether he can represent himself – while Riley’s trial is set for January.
The victims declined to comment or didn’t respond to messages.
“They’re traumatized by what happened,” Jordan said. “They feel unsafe in their homes. … All of them I’ve spoken to say they’ve changed. You sleep with one eye open.”
The Athletic‘s Fabian Ardaya contributed to this report.
