Last weekend, mass shootings happened in Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Tennessee (ABC News). This weekend, Washington joins the nationwide list after shots rang out at 6 PM on Sunday, killing or wounding 7 (Seattle Times).
Bite of Seattle
Bite of Seattle is an annual festival voted “Best Food Festival” in the United States in 2016 and 2017, drawing 350,000 attendees over three days annually. Today, with an estimated 100,000+ visitors (King 5), gunfire broke out around 6 P.M., with multiple eyewitnesses (Seattle Times) (The Guardian) describing the noise as a popping sound. One man near a stage where a band was playing testifed he heard “at least one dozen shots.” (CNN). At 7:47 PM, two people were pronounced dead at the scene (CNN Affiliate KOMO). To the knowledge of One Shot, One Story, no news network has identified the deceased yet.
Among the wounded was a 40-year-old woman suffered minor injuries and declined to be taken. The other 4 were taken to Harborview Medical Center; a 2-year-old boy, a 56-year-old woman in surgery and in critical condition, and a 23-year-old man and 39-year-old woman in satisfactory condition (King 5).
Multiple accounts corroborate that the shooting triggered a near-stampede in the area. Two witnesses interviewed said people were running “everywhere” and some took refuge in the Space Needle gift shop one block away (CNN). A second source adds that “videos showed people on the ground, taking cover behind pillars and shelves of merchandise” (BBC). One man said “it was a stampede” and describes the carnage: “there’s bodies everywhere…I mean, I counted eight” (NBC).
For the high schoolers of Washington, the shooting hits a little too close to home. Like the shootings last weekend in Minnesota, our youth are in close proximity. Several students were almost caught in the fire.
A student at Lake Washington remarked, “I was really close to going to Bite of Seattle to the point where I had the food plan and everything. Then my driver copped out and I had a homework assignment, so I decided not to.” He adds, “There’s a few people I know that went.”
Another student from Bellevue remarked: “You know, I almost went…but [the] friend group said no…it was three other people.”
Life is precious. These are the kinds of tragedies that need to be kept far away from our youth.