We have details now about an incident that involves both the mistaken phone call mentioned in this earlier report and an overnight situation we had briefly checked out (before detouring to a fire).
(WSB photo by Patrick Sand, taken at standoff scene, around 1:30 am)
It started about 8 pm last night with a call from the 5400 block of 21st SW. A bullet had gone through the wall of a house, through multiple rooms, and wound up shattering a bathroom light. Police found the bullet on the bathroom floor. Police determined the shot came from somewhere to the east, and below the house. While investigating, they heard shots being fired from the back yard of a home in the 5400 block of 18th SW. In that yard, they found “multiple pistol-shell casings and four spent shotgun shells around a fire pit,” according to Seattle Police media-response Det. Renee Witt. She says a resident of the house gave police verbal authority to search the backyard, where they also found a “large-caliber rifle-shell casing.” But when they tried to search inside the home, “the occupants inside locked the door” and wouldn’t even let the resident who’d allowed the yard search come back inside. So, they got a search warrant for the house and nearby vehicles. (Somewhere in that interval is when we got a tip about this, went to the scene and took the photo above, though on-scene police wouldn’t comment.)
Given the weapon involvement, the SWAT team was called in. “The occupants were safely removed,” Det. Witt says, adding that police found seven handguns, a pistol-grip shotgun, an “AK-47-type rifle hidden underneath the stairs leading to the downstairs portion of the house” and “brought the evidence to the precinct.” One person was arrested – for unrelated warrants; any further arrests will depend on results of the investigation, including the original shot-fired-into-house case.
ADDED 3:05 PM: No indication whether it might be related, but we got a call from someone about half a mile away, on Puget Ridge, who says gunshots fired from outside pierced her home too. Police found two different-caliber bullets (.45 and .40), she says; this happened early the morning of July 4th, and the resident and her husband just thought they were hearing fireworks. Nobody was hit but it was a close call – they were 12 feet away from where a bullet landed, she says.
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