About the emergency response at Avalon/Genesee

Many questions about an SFD and SPD response that tied up Avalon Way for a while about an hour and a half ago. This one was a bit complicated. Here’s what is reported to have happened, according to dispatchers, officers, and firefighters:

First, firefighters were in the area dealing with an alarm at an apartment building. Meantime, initially unrelated, a woman was reported to be threatening people aboard a northbound C Line bus with a “box cutter.” That would be King County Transit Police‘s jurisdiction, but they asked for SPD help, so officers headed that way. In the meantime, the woman got off the bus and was then reported to be climbing on it, “injuring herself.” Firefighters were treating her for those injuries when they reported that she started threatening them with violence, so they asked for reinforcements including police help. As police approached, she bolted. The search ensued from there. They did not find her and couldn’t get a K-9 team to join, so the search ended. They did circulate a photo taken from the bus’s security camera, but we don’t have access to that; the description announced multiple times over the radio is that she was a Black woman in her 30s, in a reddish or purplish jacket and sweat paints. The suspect was the only person injured so far as we’ve heard.

14 Replies to "About the emergency response at Avalon/Genesee"

  • 1994 November 21, 2023 (10:16 pm)

    Whew! Sounds scary for the bus passengers & driver. The poor woman having a mental health or drug fueled crisis….I hope she is able to calm herself and find a safe place in her mind.  Sounds like she may need supervision when out in the community to keep her, and the rest of us, safe.

  • WSea4936 November 21, 2023 (10:21 pm)

    WTF!  This snarled traffic BOTH directions of Avalon.  Hopefully she’s ok but please kindly find her and throw the book at her.  Super annoying 👎.  Glad no one was hurt.

    • Brian November 22, 2023 (7:22 am)

      God forbid someone’s mental health crisis causes traffic to snarl in both directions. Sorry you had to sit in traffic for fifteen minutes. 

      • Byron James November 22, 2023 (7:53 pm)

        It’s great that there are people like you to determine the value of other people’s time for them.

  • West Seattle Mad Sci Guy November 22, 2023 (12:42 am)

    Well. I think that explains some of tonight. Heard a loud altercation outside at the rapid ride C stop on 35th and Avalon in proximity to a fire alarm in the distance. It seemed to end when a bus showed up. It was loud and very not pretty. Though I’m pretty used to ignoring it so I don’t remember details of what the angry complaint was.

  • Mellow Kitty November 22, 2023 (9:28 am)

    Getting on the bus these days – “Welcome to King County Metro. Good luck folks.” 

  • Eric1 November 22, 2023 (9:55 am)

    The bus occasionally has “interesting” passengers and the odds go up outside of business commute hours.  I commute daily on mass transit and if I have to travel outside of business hours, I will sometimes have to make a determination on which stop I will get off early on.  I will call the spouse to pick me up on the first couple of WS stops just to avoid random trouble.  The C and H lines are usually safe but there have been a couple of incidents over the years that involve weapons and idiots.  On the bus, you are responsible for your own safety as I haven’t seen any of the promised safety improvements after the recent murder on the H-line (that is, buses have the normal level of protection for WS which is = none). 

    • Daniel November 22, 2023 (1:53 pm)

      There isn’t realistically a way to defend oneself on a bus vs a knife.  Pepper spray gets really dicey in an enclosed area, even the gel stuff.  Going hands on with someone holding a blade is a terrible plan.  A gun also wouldn’t reliably work if the attacker is already on the same bus as you: knife beats gun if you’re up close (or at the very least mutually assured destruction, so from the perspective of not getting hurt, you lose). Plus a huge percentage of people commuting on the bus are going to and from work which disallows guns anyways.  De-escalation, if possible, or stop and get off asap is about as good as you can do.

  • Terry November 22, 2023 (3:05 pm)

    We would have had a few bucks left over to assist our mentally ill brothers and sisters but it’s far more important to be constantly at war.

    • Neighbor November 22, 2023 (5:38 pm)

      What war are we in?

      • Scarlett November 23, 2023 (11:22 am)

        Far too serious of a subject to play cute semantic games.  Do you seriously think this military adventurism around the world, a sort of  modern day Roman Empire, is what our founders envisioned for this country?    

    • Scarlett November 22, 2023 (9:06 pm)

      Agreed, Terry.  

      “War is the health of the state.”- Randolph Bourne

      A pithy remark that sums up the grim, utterly depressing reality underlaying even the most so-called “noble” wars.  

    • Rhonda November 22, 2023 (10:15 pm)

      Um, the U.S. isn’t currently at war right now and we haven’t been for several years, so…

  • Jack November 27, 2023 (6:49 pm)

    Who’s not so brilliant idea was it to close all of the mental institutions?  Some people just can’t be out in society and now we have the DOC (Department of Corrections) being used to house mentally ill persons when the DOC is not set up for and never intended to be a facility to treat mental health.

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