UPDATE: Another person dies at Rotary Viewpoint Park (updated Wednesday)

J April 20, 2026 (6:47 pm)

Good thing the sweep solved all our problems.

Martha April 20, 2026 (6:50 pm)

Pretty big response for an overdose! Multiple fire engines, aid car, Multiple police. I thought it was another shooting!

mygoodness April 21, 2026 (12:12 pm)

How do you function without a heart? Just curious.

Dysfunction April 20, 2026 (7:04 pm)

Swept last week. People aren’t camping there obviously now, but still hanging out doing drugs.

tense April 20, 2026 (8:36 pm)

Actually, tents are back in the park this afternoon.
tense April 20, 2026 (9:42 pm)

Fwiw, tents are back in the park as of this afternoon.
Yma April 21, 2026 (7:58 am)

Tents were back day after sweep.folks coming in & out of greenspace behind (that used to have an uncut fence)

35thAveSw April 20, 2026 (7:50 pm)

I was directly behind the ME’s van on 35th as it made a left into the park. About 6:20pm. Just two police SUVs left by then — they were blocking most views of a sheet on the ground a bit north of the crosswalk.

Jan April 20, 2026 (8:15 pm)

Very sad.

Alki resident April 20, 2026 (8:55 pm)

If you look at the daily medical examiner list, you’ll see a staggering number of overdoses in our city on a regular basis. Seattle is doing nothing to stop this madness. I’m hair the sweeps but it’s only a house cleaning and they’re right back to the same spots..This’ll keep happening all summer long.

WSB April 20, 2026 (9:35 pm)

I read that list daily. Most of the drug deaths are in private residences. 8 on today’s list. Including one in a nursing home. None today listed as ‘outdoors’; 1 listed as in a vehicle. – TR
Joe April 21, 2026 (6:44 am)

I too read the list often as a factual analysis of what really is taking place in Seattle/King CountyThe report spells out daily. The majoriy of human deaths are due to Substance Abuse, Gunshot Violence, Accidents, Suicides….Spent 60 years in West Seattle, we got run off by Bad Human Behavoir.No encampments and/or sleeping on the streets allowed here.And we feel protected
- WSB April 21, 2026 (10:15 am)
  
  Datapoint because it sounds like you’re misinterpreting it: The M/E list does NOT include all deaths, so no, the “majority of human deaths” are not due to those factors. The list represents only the cases in which the Medical Examiner was called in for some reason or another, often because the death was unexpected, even if it turns out to be a “natural” death like a massive heart attack – if someone dies despite medics’ efforts to revive them, the call goes out over the air, “C & C” as in “(send) cops and coroner.” – TR

Derek April 20, 2026 (9:04 pm)

Involuntary committment for drug & mental health treatment or involuntary incarceration for trespassing & drug crimes. No alternatives.

Derp April 20, 2026 (9:22 pm)

Sounds like you want to violate someone’s personal rights. Don’t think that can or will be done
YepSame April 20, 2026 (9:59 pm)

Not a popular approach in this region, but when everything else is failing, agree this should be a viable option, except we’re tight on institutional space and those who believe this is not humane don’t want to house or donate their own space to solve the problem. Round and round we go.
Derek (not this one) April 20, 2026 (10:02 pm)

The opposite of this. Easier healthcare access and free housing.
- YepSame April 20, 2026 (10:21 pm)
  
  Easier healthcare access, sure, talk to the institutions about that; free housing, no such thing as free, who’s gonna pay for it? You? The State is beyond broke, the City can’t pay for all it’s programs, taxes keep going up, or your rent, utilities, etc if you don’t own. The uber-rich don’t want to fork over their cash leaving town and some of us are tired of seeing more and more of our hard earned money go (in taxes) somewhere we can’t see any results in.
  - budgetsreflectvalues April 21, 2026 (9:58 am)
    
    It’s funny how the question is always “who is going to pay for free housing” and not “how do prisons and other institutions of incarceration get funded?”
    - Not Funny April 21, 2026 (3:39 pm)
      
      Actually not funny when it is in response to someone saying “free housing”, which you know is NOT free. So, you gonna pay, as they say? Then maybe it will be free to others if YOU pay. As for institutions of incarceration, thats a whole different topic of funding and who runs them, both government and private. So, yeah, does reflect values (and history) in our society.
Justin April 20, 2026 (10:05 pm)

Yes, but how do we get to there from here?
Derrick April 20, 2026 (10:12 pm)

Let’s start with expanding access to VOLUNTARY drug and mental health treatments. Cascade hospital closed. There are almost never beds available at mental health treatment centers, and when they are, they are for woefully insufficient periods of time. It takes at least a month to stabilize on an antipsychotic (if you are lucky) but the average length of stay for patients is 1 week. Substance abuse inpatient resources are equally rare. We can find half a billion dollars for libraries, but there is no desire to fund mental health or substance abuse programs. Instead we console each other with a pendulum swinging between the tolerance and pseudo-compassion and sweeps. We need REAL systemic reform and change.
- West Seattlite April 21, 2026 (6:53 am)
  
  Average length of stay of a week means that when given the option, patients aren’t choosing to stay long enough for the treatment to be effective.These passive options are a money pit, and frankly we shouldn’t prioritize ineffective optional treatments over community resources like libraries.

Rob April 21, 2026 (7:20 am)

This is sad. 3 in the last few weeks in the same location. Something tells me there someone in our are area is selling a product that has to much spike in the punch. If so we can expect more. I sincerely hope not.

Jake April 21, 2026 (8:16 am)

Someone died. That’s tragic and sad. Not every story has to be a chance to grandstand that you want everyone who is poor or an addict thrown into jail. My neighbors disgust me sometime and it’s infuriating. You don’t do this when it’s someone who has a picture and obituary on here. Why treat this person any different?

mygoodness April 21, 2026 (12:13 pm)

Agree.

snowskier April 21, 2026 (8:35 am)

Let’s see, picked up and locked in jail for triage of criminal activity, mental health assessment or drug treatment needs or left to die in the park with ‘personal freedoms’ intact. Seems like one option is actually compassionate and the other is performative. Sorry this person had to go out this way.

lucy April 21, 2026 (8:43 am)

Living in a tent in a public park, doing drugs and stealing from others is NOT A RIGHT. In a society as wealthy as ours, it is unacceptable that people are given the option of living on the streets.

CaptAdmiral April 21, 2026 (8:59 am)

Totally humane to allow people trapped in the grips of addiction and/or mental illness to “figure it out for themselves” out on the streets, in the parks, under the freeway, etc. These folks cannot take care of themselves. They will only voluntarily do what gets them their next fix. They will not choose voluntarily to take help because they are not in their right mind. Expecting rational behavior from an irrational mind warped by addiction is absurd. They have lost their way and their autonomy. Why we allow this chaos to just continue and not take interventive action (sorry, sweeps ain’t it) is boggling to me. This is a serious problem that deserves a serious, actionable response.

Clinker April 21, 2026 (11:05 am)

If the city’s specific goal was to create conditions maximizing probability of death to addicts, would our response look any different than what we’re seeing now?

WSmom April 21, 2026 (10:39 am)

May this soul rest in peace, what an awful tragedy. I am deeply upset over the way they did NOT shield the body from the road, I was driving my son to baseball practice headed up 35th and the body with the white draping was in FULL view of the road, and the two SPD were just sitting in their cars, not doing anything but waiting for the coroner… they could have moved their cars just a bit closer together to prevent the public (INCLUDING YOUNG CHILDREN) from seeing the dead body. That was a tough conversation to have with my small child. Protocol needs to be put in place about being better with that, they mattered, even in addiction.

mygoodness April 21, 2026 (12:09 pm)

I’m confused. First you said the body (may the person’s soul rest in peace) was draped. Then you said that people could see the body. Which was it? In most cases, a body cannot be touched or moved without authorization from the medical examiner or coroner, who holds primary jurisdiction over the deceased. They draped it, which was respectful and lawful. Are they supposed to build a fence around it so you don’t have to have a tough conversation? Welcome to being a parent in an age of rampant homelessness and drug overdoses. Maybe you should just keep your kids at home. Also your self absorption in this moment is pretty astounding. Someone has passed from something tragic.
dwg April 21, 2026 (12:58 pm)

“my pearls!”

don'tblockme April 21, 2026 (12:00 pm)

This is no longer up to the Cities and Counties to fix, this should now lie in Governor Ferguson’s hands this is his State, City, and Counties. Do something Ferguson!

anonyme April 21, 2026 (12:24 pm)

Public drug use is illegal; if even this ONE law was enforced, these deaths might have been avoided. What a pathetic reflection on our so-called “leadership”.

Lauren April 21, 2026 (1:01 pm)

This makes #3 in 6 months, correct? The individual that was harassing the stylists in Vain and was subsequently trespassed from West Seattle OD’ed in the park sometime in late 2025, if memory serves.

Not_really_jaded April 21, 2026 (1:55 pm)

This is just sad. We can do better. We need housing again, and in a quantity that is far greater than is being discussed. We can talk about drug aversion but the crisis is being accelerated by not having safer spaces for people to live. We may not like the idea of public housing, but we let developers go nuts and we pushed people outside so need to think about how to do better than we are doing now.

Adam April 21, 2026 (3:41 pm)

As I’ve said many times, read the comments of all the enablers above to find where the problem lies. We need more voluntary treatment options? Sure, except they refuse those offers, so how does that help? Need more housing? Well, idk about y’all, but if I lost my place to live, the first thing that DOESN’T come to mind is “I should get high and sleep on the streets”. The sweeps aren’t there to help the homeless drug addicts, the offers for placement into programs are. The sweeps are for the rest of us who want our parks to be parks. Nobody that screams about treatment or housing offers not being there ever seem to address the obvious issue of offers being declined, usually because of the rules they’d be subject to. So, it’s not a treatment or housing availability issue then, is it? Occasionally I hear the absolutely crazy idea that we shouldn’t put rules on these programs, such as no drug use. Then, my friend you completely misunderstand the problems these folks deal with. Almost always drugs are involved. The longer you make excuses, the less believable it is that you have any compassion at all. There’s nothing about their living conditions that make it more compassionate than whatever it is you think I’m asking for. But fine, you can all blame Trump or Ferguson if that makes it easier. These are problems we can solve at home, we just need to want to stop using homeless drug addicts as our political pawns

k April 21, 2026 (4:55 pm)

If you had been homeless, you would understand why so many who live on the streets do end up on drugs. Homeless people are far more likely to be victims of crime than their housed counterparts. If you don’t have safe, indoor shelter, which many people don’t because there are far fewer beds than homeless people, every single night you are worried about your safety. It doesn’t feel safe to sleep in your car. It doesn’t feel safe to sleep alone. It doesn’t feel safe to sleep next to others, who are probably strangers.

You try to sleep as close to sidewalks and public areas as you can, hoping the foot traffic will help keep you safer then being out of sight. But then you get harassed by the people who don’t like seeing homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk. As soon as you find a space that feels safe, it gets swept, it closes for the season, funding changes the hours and you didn’t get in line in time.

And soon enough the only way you feel safe is to not sleep at all. And then the meth starts. Because if you feel like you are going to die every night due to sleeping unsheltered, you have nothing to lose by trying it for just one night, just a couple nights, just this week until you find a stable place to sleep.

Everyone likes to assume the habits start before homelessness, and are not a consequence of it. Because it helps you see folks as “other” and not have to confront the reality of the situation, and how easily it could be you. So please stop speaking to situations you have no knowledge of. Someone died at that park, and they certainly didn’t become homeless or start using with the hope of ending up on the Medical Examiner’s list. They had friends, they had family, they had people that loved them. Human beings deserve to be treated like human beings. That shouldn’t be a controversial take.
- The Real JP April 21, 2026 (7:51 pm)
  
  Since you self-identify as knowledgeable on the subject, what sources/data are you consulting to arrive at the conclusion that the majority of homeless drug addicts did not begin abusing drugs until after they became homeless?
- Adam April 23, 2026 (6:15 am)
  
  I don’t see them as other. Partly because I’ve been there. So thanks. Not once did I decide to start doing meth. You’re an enabler and you’re helping to kill them. Nice work. Pat yourself on the back, you’re solving homelessness!

Jill April 22, 2026 (5:43 am)

Are we great again yet?

lets focus on the real issue April 22, 2026 (8:48 am)

“Someone died at that park, and they certainly didn’t become homeless or
start using with the hope of ending up on the Medical Examiner’s list.
They had friends, they had family, they had people that loved them.
Human beings deserve to be treated like human beings. That shouldn’t be
a controversial take.”This isn’t the controversial part. What’s controversial is the meaning we should derive from this fact. The deceased was a human being and deserves to be treated as such. But what does that mean? Does that mean that the community should pay whatever cost for whatever housing or treatment, indefinitely? Does that mean there should be no consequences for illegal or anti-social behavior–however understandable that behavior might be, if the individual in question has a sympathetic story? Does that mean that we *must* follow the “housing first” mantra or else we are not according this human being treatment as a human being?There is a great deal of room for discussion about what “we” should do after we agree that the people involved are humans worthy of respect. The controversial part of your statement is the implication that everyone who agrees with you, then also agrees with you about some specific policy direction, and that also anyone who doesn’t agree with that policy direction also doesn’t agree that we should treat the homeless as human beings. For instance, I will stipulate that we do agree that there are some people who turn to drug use as a result of the conditions of homelessness, as described in one of these posts. Does this mean we should accept–without intervention–the drug use at bus stops? Does the fact that the individual has a sympathetic story mean that they should be immune from accountability? K seems to imply that the answers to my questions are “yes,” though its possible that they might have additional nuance to offer, and I’d love to hear it. Further, if we can agree that some people are driven to drug use by homelessness, can we also agree that some people are driven to homeless by drug use?The question that many are asking is, why is it that sympathizing with the homeless means that we can do nothing other than leave them to behave however they wish in public places without intervention? Why is it that our empathy for their situation must always mean that the general population has to tolerate clearly anti-social and criminal behavior in public spaces? Why is it that, unless “we” provide free housing and treatment, we have no right to expect the bare minimum of public decorum in public spaces? This is the controversy, not whether or not the homeless are humans worthy of dignified treatment. I think it is possible to insist on the essential human-ness of the homeless while also insisting that this empathy does not require the general population to inhale fentanyl while waiting to use public transportation, or to forego the use of public parks because we lack the willingness to, quite literally, police public behavior. I’d agree that “sweeps” are ineffective in changing behavior because, amongst other reasons, there isn’t actually any policing involved; behavior isn’t targeted, just the detritus of the failed compassion of doing nothing. As much as I want to reclaim these public spaces, absent sustained policing, the behavior returns the next day, as does the pain and suffering for all involved.

k April 22, 2026 (2:10 pm)

We have paid “whatever costs, indefinitely” for many corporations, for many decades. Corporations that have done FAR more societal harm than any homeless person. Why is it so hard to get on board with doing the same and providing support for actual people? It shouldn’t be controversial to treat humans like humans… which is not even as good as we treat faceless companies.