West Seattle Crime Watch followup: Delridge gunfire appeared to ‘target’ house

Ever since last week’s incident that led police to find 32 shell casings outside a house in the 5600 block of Delridge Way, we’ve been working to get the report, to see if it would include anything more on what happened or why. We finally obtained it today.

The report was written by the patrol officer who responded to what was described as five callers who “reported hearing 10 or more shots in the area” just before 1 am last Wednesday (January 6th). That included a caller who reported finding “eight bullet holes in her front and side windows.”

At that residence, the officer wrote:

The glass storm door that faces west was shattered and there was a bullet hole in the front door. The front yard on the west side of the house was littered with shell casings and there appeared to be multiple bullet holes in the north side of the house. Twenty-seven 7.62 shell casings were located in the front/west yard and driveway, along with five 9 mm shell casings and one unfired 9 mm round. The casings were strewn about the front/west yard and driveway. It appeared the shooter or shooters stood in the yard and the driveway and targeted the house. 13 holes were located in the house, including a shattered window frame in the north side of the house. Two spent rounds that appeared to have hit the yard and bounced into the cement foundation of the house were located on the ground on the west side of the house.

The resident told police she was asleep when she heard the shots, “jumped out of bed and pulled her mother out of her chair and onto the floor.” Another resident slept through it. As previously reported, no one was hurt; a witness reported that “he heard the shots, then saw 4 subjects run southbound on 23rd SW from SW Findlay and get into a dark-colored vehicle and left in an unknown direction.” (There is no description of the “subjects” nor anything more about the vehicle.) Police speculated a nearby alley might have been used as an escape route.

We have followups in the works on other recent incidents, too, but are writing them up separately. If you have concerns about this or any other neighborhood crime issues, by the way, the West Seattle Crime Prevention Council‘s next meeting – with local police in attendance as always – is one week from tonight, Tuesday, January 19th, 7 pm, at the Southwest Precinct, Delridge Way SW and SW Webster.

3 Replies to "West Seattle Crime Watch followup: Delridge gunfire appeared to 'target' house"

  • tm7302 January 17, 2016 (10:35 am)

    Has anyone seen this reported in any other forum other than the WSB?  I would have thought this would have been all over the news.  Could there be an active attempt at keeping this information out of the media?

    • WSB January 17, 2016 (11:06 am)

      TM, we report news every day and every night that no one else reports, as the only full-service news publication covering West Seattle and *only* West Seattle. This isn’t “out of the media” – it’s on a news publication (ours) with 100,000+ readers. If you mean “out of the REGIONAL media,” all those organizations follow WSB on social media and read the site, and pick up stories (without crediting us as the original source, which is unethical, but that’s a whole ‘nother discussion) frequently. If nobody else decided to follow up on this, it’s because either they didn’t care or they were too busy that day. They were all perfectly capable of also contacting SPD to get the report that’s the subject of this story – TR

    • Marion January 17, 2016 (7:21 pm)

      Yeah, by that group of guys hiding in the grassy knoll.

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