A series of three high-profile killings in February have rocked Seattle’s homeless community, bringing concerns about safety and anti-homeless bias to the fore.
On the morning of Feb. 10, 68-year-old Paul Ewell was found dead from multiple sharp force injuries to the head in an alley near 12th Avenue in the Yesler Terrace neighborhood.
Then on Feb. 18, Seattle Police Department (SPD) investigators responded to another death. This time it was 37-year-old Jared Redding, who died from blunt force injuries in a vacant parking garage on Columbia Street in downtown Seattle.
On Feb. 22, 52-year-old Cambodian American Daravuth Van was found dead on the steps of the Town Hall building in First Hill. SPD said Van had been killed with an ax at around 3:30 a.m.
All three men were unhoused, and their deaths sparked an outpouring of grieving. On Feb. 12, community members gathered in Yesler Terrace to hold an impromptu vigil to remember Ewell.
“Ewell’s was a very familiar face in my area. I live at 11th and Spruce; he lived between 11th and 12th on Terrace, near the gas station on Jefferson,” wrote Robby White, a data manager with United Way of King County, in an email to Real Change. “We’d exchange waves or nods on my trips to the convenience store. He had a routine, he always set up in the evening, tore down in the morning and would warmly greet passersby. My memory of him is neighborly, akin to the people on dog walks or jogs; a regular in our part of town.”
On March 6, the Women’s Housing, Equality and Enhancement League (WHEEL), a group of formerly and currently homeless women and allies, held a vigil to honor Van, Ewell and other homeless people who have died outside or due to violence in 2024.
“The murder of Mr. Daravuth Van shocked and frightened the entire homeless community,” said Anitra Freeman, an organizer with WHEEL and vendor for Real Change. “We’re here to pay honor to his humanity.”
Following Van’s death, WHEEL and nearby First Hill businesses helped crowdsource surveillance footage in an effort to locate a suspect. This effort aided SPD’s investigation, and on March 6, the King County Prosecuting Attorney filed first degree murder charges against 25-year-old Liam Kryger.
Prosecutors allege Kryger had a history of violence, including threatening to kill his parents on multiple occasions. In 2018, charges of second-degree assault were brought against him and dismissed the following year. Kryger was seen on surveillance video scoping out Van’s location at around 2:30 a.m. before returning an hour later. SPD confirmed that he purchased the ax used to kill Van from Lowe’s Home Improvement store in Mount Baker on Feb. 9.
Kryger is currently being held at the King County Correctional Facility on a $5 million bail. He pleaded “not guilty” on March 20.
According to SPD spokesperson Shawn Weismiller, detectives are investigating whether Kryger might have been linked to the deaths of Ewell and Redding. He said there is no more information available about who may have killed them as of March 20.
In addition to the three killings, there have been other reported instances of violence against unhoused people, including a hit-and-run attack on Feb. 17. Capitol Hill Blog reported that the 39-year-old victim, who was sleeping outside a stretch of businesses on 19th Avenue East, suffered serious injuries to his lower body.
In a 2014 review of sociology studies by the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, researchers found that across the U.S., unhoused people are seven to 10 times more likely to be victims of a violent crime than their housed counterparts. Not having your own space to sleep at night makes you inherently vulnerable — a fact that was referenced in the 2003 Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine study “No Door to Lock.”
Real Change Vendor Carl Nakajima said he knew Van before the COVID-19 pandemic, from the time when Van lived in the apartment building Nakajima managed. Nakajima said that had Van been awake, he probably would have fought back.
In addition to being more vulnerable, unhoused people also face significant hate and bias from their housed neighbors simply for being homeless. Since 2019, at least 78 bias crimes against homeless people have been reported in Seattle.
Michelle Charon and James Charon say they have been victims of an anonymous harassment campaign by housed vigilantes in the Delridge neighborhood where they live. The couple has lived in a trailer since 2022 when they were evicted with only a weekend’s notice, which Michelle Charon said was illegal.
In May 2023, Real Change reported that the Charons and other RV residents had received threatening letters signed by “neighborhood watch” demanding they leave. In the two years they’ve been unhoused, Michelle and James Charon said their vehicle has had its tires flattened and fuel stolen, and one of their RV’s windows was broken.
“People will go by and make comments; they throw things at our trailer,” Michelle Charon said. “Rocks thrown at us. They tried to bear mace our dogs at one point when they thought we weren’t there.”
Michelle Charon said they are ignorant and don’t care about the struggles that unhoused people face.
“People really don’t care why you’re homeless or [about] the circumstances around being homeless,” she said. “They look at you as a parasite; it doesn’t matter, even [to] the cops. Because obviously you have a problem if your credit score is not good enough — they don’t give a shit about that. They don’t understand that there’s extenuating circumstances.”
Michelle Charon added that the constant harassment has left the couple fearful and severely impacted their mental health.
“We’re constantly paranoid; we don’t sleep very well,” she said. “We hear something outside and it’s like, ‘what now?’ We’re afraid to leave [the trailer] for any length of time.”
WHEEL organizer Freeman said the structural violence of poverty compounds on top of the direct violence and hate unhoused people face. She said the lack of dignified shelter, housing and community support has directly contributed to the high mortality rate among Seattle’s unhoused population. In 2023, 415 homeless people died in King County, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“There’s absolutely no excuse for people dying on the streets of the richest city in the richest country on Earth,” Freeman said. “You have a continued housing crisis, housing disparity, economic injustice [and] economic disparity that’s going to continue to drive people into homelessness. And you have no real solutions; you have the pretense of sweeping people around. That just keeps increasing the hateful attitude toward homeless people. So you have isolation, despair [that] drives people into drug overdoses.”
WHEEL has demanded a meeting with Mayor Bruce Harrell, something that he has so far declined to do. The group wants the city to open up more emergency shelters to bring in people off the streets. Freeman said the only way for unhoused Seattleites to get through these tragedies is by uniting and taking collective action.
“Coming together as a community helps us survive,” she said.
Guy Oron is the staff reporter for Real Change. He handles coverage of our weekly news stories. Find them on Twitter, @GuyOron.
Read more of the March 27–April 2, 2024 issue.