This Week In Seattle: 6 Shootings, 9 Victims, 1 Dead

SEATTLE, WA — Four people were wounded and one killed in three separate shootings Friday evening in Seattle, bringing the total number of people shot across the city since May 5 to nine — not including a fatal police shooting in Queen Anne on Wednesday.

The first shooting on Friday happened around 3 p.m. at 23rd and Union in the Central District. According to police, someone opened fire on a group of people. They were able to drive to Swedish Hospital on Cherry Street. One of the victims was pronounced dead there, the other two were taken to Harborview with non-life threatening injuries. Police said the suspects fled the scene.

Two more shootings followed: one around 11 p.m. in the Rainier Valley near 46th Avenue South and Eddy Street, and another an hour later in the Central District at 27th and Jackson.

In the Rainier Valley shooting, two men were walking when two vehicles began following them. Then people inside those vehicles opened fire, hitting one of the men in the arm. In the Jackson Street shooting, a group of people were outside playing cards when someone opened fire on the group. One man was hit multiple times and taken to Harborview Medical Center for surgery.

It's difficult to tell if Seattle is seeing an uptick in shootings this spring, however. The department's publicly available crime data is only current to March. As of that month, police had responded to 162 shootings in2019, which vary in nature from injury shootings to people calling police to report hearing gunshots.

That number includes 47 gun assaults, with the highest number of incidents in the Capitol Hill (5), Pioneer Square (5), and Alki (4) neighborhoods.

The week began with a shooting early Sunday morning in Pioneer Square. A man was shot in the leg at the Sinking Ship Parking Garage during a confrontation with a gunman. A Seattle officer opened fire on the gunman, but he fled the scene and it was unclear if he was wounded.

On Sunday around 10 p.m., two men were shot at a liquor store in the Rainier Beach neighborhood, and they both survived. Around 7 p.m. Wednesday, a man was seriously wounded when he was shot in the back while riding in a car along Northgate Way, just a few blocks east of the mall area.

Four other people were wounded in shootings in Seattle between April 20 and May 2. Those four shootings took place near the Central District, in the Capitol Hill and Judkins Park neighborhoods.

There was also an officer-involved shooting this week in Queen Anne. Officers killed Ryan M. Smith, 31, in an apartment. Smith was holding a knife when he was shot, and had been threatening to kill his girlfriend.