While at the Southwest Precinct late last night looking at reports including the Morgan Junction anti-gay vandalism case (WSB coverage here), we also found the police report from Friday night’s Alki shooting. Not all of the 44-page report is public, but there are a few additional details of interest – read on:
Southwest Precinct Capt. Joe Kessler had mentioned during our interview yesterday about Alki police presence (read the story here) that the 19-year-old shooting victim was not from West Seattle; the Rainier Valley address on the police report confirms that. The report also says he is known to police as a gang member.
We had already reported that the SPD Gang Unit was taking the lead in the shooting, which it appears now the victim will survive (police told us yesterday that he’s in “stable condition”); the police report also quotes one of more than a dozen witnesses as saying that he observed people inside a vehicle in the area “flashing what he believed to be gang signs … he felt that ‘something bad’ was about to happen.”
Multiple witness accounts in the report describe a group of young men standing by the northeast corner of the Pepperdock Restaurant (left side of the photo above) just before the shooting, which was then described in the report:
(One) witness stated he then heard two gun shots in slow succession and immediately hit the floor … he then stood up and observed one of the males on the northeast corner of Pepperdock holding a flat black possibly semiautomatic handgun. … witness stated he then saw the gun fire three more times rapidly.
Another witness heard “a total of 6-7 shots.” The descriptions of the group of young men, who then were reported to have taken off running southbound toward Whale Tail/Alki Playfield (as reported in our original coverage), vary dramatically; the running itself was the main common thread. One witness said the group was “laughing” while running; another thought the group had been smoking marijuana before the shooting.
The report goes on to describe one witness seeing the victim being “tended to” on the water side of the street before “his associates placed him into the back of a black Chevrolet Impala … which was initially parked westbound on Alki, and after the victim was placed in it, the vehicle made a U-turn and drove eastbound.”
One witness memorized the license plate number, which helped police stop the vehicle and two others near Seacrest. While the victim was taken to the hospital, the drivers of the other two vehicles gave police consent to search their vehicles. The report says a handgun was found in one of those vehicles “but it was unclear if this handgun as related to the shooting.” The six people who were in the various vehicles were taken downtown for questioning.
So far, no arrests reported. As we have mentioned in the past few days, you can expect Southwest Precinct leadership to discuss this case – and anything else you want to ask about – at upcoming community meetings, including the West Seattle Crime Prevention Council at 7 pm May 19, precinct meeting room, and Alki Community Council at 7 pm May 21, Alki Community Center.
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