A man was taken into custody Wednesday night as police swarmed the area following a report of a man threatening people with a knife and an injured man at Broadway and Pine. According to eyewitnesses, one man sustained a gash to the face as others sought refuge inside of a drugstore at the corner. According to one police officer at the scene, the suspect was carrying a butter knife when he was apprehended by police.
UPDATE Thursday, 12/13/12 — 7:55 AM: SPD has posted a preliminary report on the incident describing how the attack started inside Walgreens:
Officers confronted a man with a knife outside a Walgreens on Broadway last night after responding to calls that he had cut someone with a knife and was threatening others. After a few tense minutes, the suspect was taken into custody.
Shortly after 8:00 pm last night East Precinct officers were dispatched to a report of a man with a knife assaulting and threatening people near Broadway Avenue and East Pine Street. As the first officer arrived in the area, people on the sidewalk began pointing her toward the south east corner, where the suspect was standing. The suspect was holding a knife in his hand. Additional reports coming into 911 also stated that there was a victim inside the Walgreens who had a cut to his face, courtesy of the suspect.
The officer commanded the suspect to drop his knife repeatedly, but each time he ignored her commands. The suspect, still armed with the knife, advanced on the first officer. The officer repositioned to maintain distance between them until another officer arrived. It appeared that the suspect was ranting incoherently. The suspect eventually threw his knife toward the officer, and a Taser was employed to assist in taking the suspect into custody.
Once the suspect was in custody, officers were able to go to the Walgreens and check with the victims. The man inside the store was bleeding from a cut to his cheek. He told officers that he was walking past the store on Pine Street when he noticed the suspect yelling and waving a knife around. The man stated that he tried to walk past the suspect, but that the suspect reached out and struck him. The victim told the man to stay away from him, and then, without warning, the suspect slashed at the man’s face with the knife. The victim immediately ran into the store for assistance as the suspect walked away on Pine. Several other people approached officers and stated that the suspect had attempted to attack them as well.
Seattle Fire Department arrived and treated the victim for his cut and the suspect for the Taser deployment at the scene. The victim’s laceration was not life-threatening. The suspect, a 35-year-old male, was later booked into the King County Jail for Investigation of Assault.
Here is one account of the incident sent to us via Twitter:
At 8 PM I saw at least 3 cop cars at around 8 PM in the Summit Ave E & E John St area, just north of the Gaybucks. The police department reports “Assault … with or w/o weapons (no shootings)” at around that time. ( https://twitter.com/SeattlePDE1/status/279089530714337280 ) Is this related or a separate issue?
“as olive swarmed the area”
Who is Olive?
The attack occured in front of Walgreens on Broadway and Pine. I was shopping when the victim was walked to the pharmacy to tend his wound.
Ask Tim Cook. iPhone shenanigans
I was the dude stabbed in the face last night (feels pretty great today). I wasn’t struck and then sliced; he approached me from behind and “diddled” on of my plugs/my ear, at which point I pushed his hand away from me and promptly told him to, “GO FUCK YOURSELF”. It was at this point that he lunged at me and hit me in the jaw, then danced around with the knife. I wasn’t aware I had been stabbed in the face until I walked inside the Walgreens to get the hell away from the crazy ass crackhead, but when I touched my face my hand was covered in blood. Five stitches, some whiskey, and a few beers and high fives later I was OK though. Hoping my Thursday night is a little more relaxed.
“The suspect, still armed with the knife, advanced on the first officer. :
Thank you Seattle police for not shooting this guy. Sounds like you could have.
Why is Capitol Hill such a magnet for nutjobs? Any time you hear a story like this, you can bet it’s coming out of one of 3 places: Capitol Hill, Downtown, or the U-dist.
Wow, Cameron! You get hella props for having such a good attitude about getting STABBED in the FACE!
Here’s to wishing you a speedy recovery and a much less stabby holiday season.
-Val
Yeah, for all the mostly-deserved crap they’ve been taking lately, it sounds like they handled this with an appropriate use of force. (While it would be easy to jump to too many conclusions from too little information, it’s interesting that a female cop was first on the scene and handled it so well.)
Yes! I was thinking the same thing.
Kudos to the officers who delt with a crazy knife wielding guy and resolved it without more blood shed. Awesome job.
Dude, sorry to hear that. You’re really lucky all he had was a butter knife. Hope your friends paid for your drinks. Glad your wound wasn’t too serious; perhaps you can tell future romantic partners it is a dueling scar or something ;)
I have to say, a few years ago I stopped using headphones when walking around because I just felt too “tuned out” and unaware of traffic, etc; but I never seriously considered something like this.
@jason I have no idea what happened but I definitely almost walked on a pretty substancial amount of blood at Summit and Broadway last night.
Agreed. Good job of not escalating the situation.
He’s lucky he wasn’t killed and being an eyewitness to the whole thing it wasn’t exactly like that. lots of people were watching. Several people didn’t have the good sense to avoid walking by the screaming man and one guy refused to back off and an “attempt” at knifing occured. I put attempt in quotes because from my vantage point the guy was not really trying to cut the man, he was just trying to scare him and missing on purpose. Whoever got cut on the face, I don’t know, didn’t see that part but the fact that it was a butterknife shows how serious the assailant was about killing someone. Two police cars arrived within seconds of each other, maybe about 5 minutes after the event started, people were not “on the sidewalk” they were in the middle of the street pointing to the assailant for the police. The police got out the man still seemed to resist, I couldn’t hear the verbal orders, I would assume they told him to drop the knife and get on the ground. I didn’t see him “throw the knife at the police” but if he did it wasn’t much of a throw, the guy then stretched his arms out and a little pop went off and the victim collapsed. My first impressions were he may have wanted a “suicide by cop” type of thing but who knows. The police account and the journalistic accounts have some discrepancies from what I saw. Funny how racism pours out of white people in those kinds of moments, the black assailant scared all the white people, one guy said “oh he’s been in prison” as if that had anything to do with anything going on.
where else are they going to go? The freaks wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else. I know because I’m one of them, but I’m a conservative freak, I only love broadway because I’m invisible amongst the wierdos, not because of the wierdos.
People have to use more sense (and I admit I use headphones more than I should) when walking around. Several people, inspite of all the warnings “he’s got a knife” kept walking right by this idiot and one guy seemed to refuse to walk around him and they ended up in the middle of the street. As a veteran of enough street altercations, it’s not that hard to be safe really. If anyone puts their hands on you, either run or kick the hell out of them. Do not under any circumstances allow them within a few feet of you without doing something. If it were me he done anything like that with, more than likely he’d have been on the ground before he had the chance to cut anything. Somewhat shocked at how stupid people are in these situations. Good thing you don’t live in a really dangerous place, you’d all be prey. Cops cannot be everywhere at all times, you are responsible for you.
Thanks! As for headphones, they didn’t play into any of this last night; mine were at home, not in my ears. Dude still came up from behind me, fondled my ear and then stabbed me in the face anyway.
You mean the suspect collapsed? After being tazed, I’m sure.
Capitol Hill is home to most of the homeless mentally ill people in the city. Sadly, this guy will be back soon, and usually the second strike is much worse than the first. He clearly wasn’t too concerned about being shot by a cop, so he’s a dangerous one, for sure.
What racism? Where? Where is it pouring from? What are you even talking about? Was the guy black, because I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere but your post.
that’s correct, after he was tased. funny, i haven’t heard many guns go off, at first I thought it may have been a gun because i’m not accustomed to hearing real guns, the pop sounded more like a cap gun though, so thankfully for this guy it was just a taser. Another thing, i’ve always believed that a good portion of the nuts out there only act crazy to scare people. Being that people are so fearful it works. Not to say there is not mental illness but I think alot of it is an intimidation ploy from people frustrated by their own powerlessness in society.
by racism, i mean what i see as usually more subtle fear being openly expressed, “oh he’s been in prison” and the fearfulness white people have of the black male is ridiculous. I’d venture to say that’s why some black men try to intimidate in the first place, can’t tell you how many times i’ve had to put them in check, I usually say “oh you must have thought I was mexican” or something similar. The racial fear was naked in those moments. You know, it’s one guy and a butter knife, he’s only going to be able to do so much. It turns out, if what the papers are saying is true, this guy doesn’t have much of a record at all.
I’m the twitter above. I’m glad you’re OK, scared the hell out of a few of us standing there when you got into the store.
Funny. I had zero knowledge of the race of the suspect or victim from all the accounts I read. Seems it is you laying race on the table.
That part of Capitol Hill is getting more and more unsafe. It’s kind of ironic, what with all the investment going on there.
You might feel more unsafe but the area is pretty busy with SPD presence these days because of the emphasis patrols in the area http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2012/07/26/capitol-hill-cr
Most street crime we’ve been reporting on in recent months has been south of Pike/Pine around Seattle U — and even that doesn’t *appear* to be a spike as much as a continued long-term trend in an area undergoing a lot of change.
You think these people have mortgages, or the scratch to rent an entire house? Where are all the small, skanky apartments? Where are all the houses that rent out single rooms? Where are all the squats?
These is why we need more rental units in more neighborhoods, to spread the crazies out (and keep rents down). And it’s why those other neighborhoods will fight tooth and nail to stop it. (Mercer Island got some new apartment buildings on its north end over the past decade, and you would’ve thought that was the Mayan Apocalypse all by itself)
Yeah, I don’t think that’s a conclusion I’d necessarily draw. There are a lot more people in “that area” than there were even a few years ago, so there are going to be more police reports simply because of that. More drunk 20somethings to get into altercations, more residents with possessions to get stolen, more attractions to draw in people from other parts of the city with intentions both good and bad. When it comes to safety, the real question is whether you’re more likely to be a victim. If assaults are up 50% but the population is up 200%, then you’re actually less likely to be a victim despite the absolute rise in incidents. Of course, if you’re doing stupid things you can just about raise your chances to certainty, but if you’re smart and taking necessary precautions (it’s a shame they’re necessary, but we do live in a city) then you really only have to ask if the RATE of these sorts of random incidents is going up. And I don’t think we can conclude that it is.