Five teenagers, serving sentences for various felonies, attacked several staff members at Echo Glen Children’s Center near Snoqualmie on Wednesday morning and escaped the state-run juvenile rehabilitation facility in a motor-pool car, according to the King County Sheriff’s Office.

The teens are all males between the ages of 14 and 17 — and two of them have escaped before, said sheriff’s spokesperson Sgt. Tim Meyer. One of the boys was convicted of murder, while others were convicted of crimes including possession of stolen property and robbery, he said.

An Echo Glen employee, who asked to remain unidentified because the person was not authorized to talk about the matter and feared being fired, identified one of the escapees as the Burien boy, now 15, who shot and killed a stranger two years ago.

Meyer didn’t provide details of the escape but said the staff members were assaulted around 7:45 a.m., suffering minor injuries.

The Echo Glen employee said that following the escape the entire campus was put into lockdown, and employees were eventually briefed by supervisors about what happened.

All five of the escaped teens were being held in the Klickitat Cottage, the only maximum security house for males at Echo Glen. That cottage, which is separated from other housing, is locked from the outside, the employee said.

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The teens first overpowered two staff members inside the cottage, the employee said, recounting what supervisors told staff...

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