34th Tacoma Homicide of 2022: Glennis LaDel Piper

It was a Thursday morning in September of 2022 when 42-year-old Glennis Piper and a coworker pulled up to a gas station in a moving truck. While there, Glennis noticed a man in an SUV was staring at him. He decided to confront the man and see what the problem was. They talked for a moment and Glennis returned to the truck.

A short while later, Glennis called a coworker to tell him they were being followed by a man in an SUV and to meet him in the parking lot of their workplace in the 1500 block of St. Paul street.

When both vehicles arrived, Glennis approached the SUV. The man got out of the vehicle. The two sized each other up. Then the man returned to his SUV. Glennis began walking away and then came back to the SUV where a witness said he heard Glennis say, “You didn’t wanna do anything at the gas station, so what now?”

The man then shot Glennis Piper in the chest and drove away. Glennis was transported to St. Joseph’s Hospital where he died of his wounds becoming the 34th Tacoma homicide of 2022.

The man responsible for his murder has never spent more than five years outside a jail cell since the age of 14. He was even sentenced to 27 years in prison for another homicide, but the sentence was reduced to 22 years. He’d been out for a year and a half when police arrested and charged him with Glennis Piper’s murder.

Glennis Piper was the fourth Tacoma homicide to occur in September 2022. With this homicide on September 15th, the rest of September was relatively quiet.

Like most homicides, this is something that could have been avoided if cooler heads had prevailed. I hate to say it’s a male thing, but in nearly twenty years of writing about Tacoma homicides I’ve never had one where a woman killed another woman because of pride and ego. Glennis had no way of knowing the stranger who was glaring at him was a convicted killer with a long history of violence. If it had been someone else staring at him, they’d likely both be alive today.

I wasn’t able to find out a lot about Glennis’s life. He loved football. He loved his family and there is a hole in that family that will never be filled. Instead the Glennis Piper shaped space will be something they get used to but never forget.

The comment section is reserved for those who knew Glennis and want to share thoughts or memories of the man.

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