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From Kryger’s Facebook page
The 25-year-old First Hill resident charged in the killing of a homeless man outside Seattle’s Town Hall has pleaded not guilty.
Liam Kryger is charged with first degree murder.
King County Prosecutors say Kryger killed 52-year-old Daravuth Van with an ax as he camped near the First Hill event venue last month.
CHS reported here on Kryger’s arrest after two murders and an assault that left a man in critical condition in Cal Anderson in area attacks that targeted homeless victims sleeping outside in February.
Kryger is charged in one of the deadly attacks. Police have not announced any arrests in the other investigations.
The charging documents for the First Hill murder don’t link the cases but Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz has said Kryger was arrested as detectives were on the lookout for a suspect possibly preying on people unhoused when they spotted a man carrying an ax and lost track of him near Freeway Park.
The ax was traced to a nearby Lowe’s home improvement store where SPD gathered images of the purchaser. A department of corrections officer was able to identify the suspect as Kryger and police and SWAT moved to arrest him near his 10th Ave residence.
Prosecutors say the First Hill case also has video evidence clearly linking Kryger to the slaying.
Kryger’s path through the justice system could involve questions of his mental health. Prosecutors say Kryger was previously arrested in 2018 for a violent burglary and stabbing in North Bend that placed him in a treatment program under supervision of the King County Mental Health Court. Kryger failed to attend a scheduled review hearing in late 2019 but managed to steer clear of the law until his arrest this winter.
Mental health competency procedures can take years to play out in the court system. In 2009, CHS reported on the long process that led to restored competency and a guilty plea in the 2007 murder of Capitol Hill resident Shannon Harps.
Kryger remains held on $5 million bail at the King County Jail where he has been held since his March 3rd arrest.
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Please also acknowledge that this psychotic, drug addicted, Northbend resident was placed in “deeply affordable housing” in Seattle at taxpayer expense without a criminal background check due to legislation passed by the previous “progressive” city council. The victim and the perpetrator are both part of the “harm-reduction”, “housing first” ideological experiment that has turned Seattle into a sh*tshow.
Yes! This is pertinent information to the story. In addition to the taxes I shell out to provide free housing to people like this serial killer, I used to annually give to Plymouth Housing Group but quit—not because I disagree with their model, but because Sawant’s forced housing policies (in which it’s now illegal in Seattle to run background checks before providing housing) meant I was voluntarily paying rent for violent criminals there, too.
It’s sad that radical politicians take taxpayer-funded housing away from deserving, needy families and give it to maniacs like Hans van Becklum, who murdered poor Kris Benson, and, of course, Wantez Tulloss, who attacked a woman walking home from work and fractured her skull with a baseball bat. (That one got Seattle featured for weeks on FOX News, rightly so, but embarassingly so.) The list goes on and on. And until our city council straightens out the years of damage done but Sawant and her squad we can expect more violent criminals to live rent-free through our taxpayer dollars.
You pay a tiny amount of taxes. Quit complaining or leave America.
I pay nearly half my income in taxes and fees between federal, property, car registration, not to mention sales taxes. We have a right and a responsibility to be upset when our taxes are channeled to social experiments that have obviously failed and need to be rethought.
Police are also a service provided to the public at “taxpayer expense”, and plenty of cops have committed well-documented, disgusting and heinous crimes under qualified immunity, yet I would never imagine you’d advocate for the line ‘that’s what’s wrong with the whole system of policing’, in the same way you just attacked publicly-funded, housing first “ideology” implying it should be thrown in the junk pile. Both may have problems to point to in their current form, but neither is a reason to write them off entirely. Your comment demonstrates a shockingly immature, myopic, and frankly sociopathic view of how society should function and improve. You clearly just hate people suffering from homelessness and/or addiction, and you want to moralize the problem and blame random individuals for what amounts to a massive economic failing of our current and former administrations. A compounding problem will continue to evolve in its challenges without some mitigating solution, and ethically housing first makes the most sense and has the data to back it. Finland was a pioneer in this concept. Replace your disdain with more education on the topic.
So you’re cool with your taxes paying for free housing for serial killers and other violent criminals? Your word salad is full of judgement and insults, but doesn’t offer anything by way of ideas or solutions.
Yes. I’m in favor of free housing for serial killers and violent criminals…it’s called prison. Mind you, free at point of service, but obviously all prison and social housing is funded through taxes…I’m sure you know this. Consequently, if you refer to these individuals by their criminal conviction first, it crafts an implication that taxes pay for criminals…but those criminals, once convicted, then live in jail, not tax-payer funded social housing. Clearly there wouldn’t be some stipulation encouraging violent crime among residents…that’s dumb and a lazy, non-sensical argument.
Taxes pay for services meant for everyone. Nazis deserve free healthcare, even if their political opinions are abhorrent and they have weird sexual hangups. Everyone deserves human dignity, Nomnom. I also contend that what I said above was very coherent and not a word salad at all, and also that you’re just a hater.
Exactly! Are you OK with these serial killers driving around on the streets YOU pay taxes for? They murder people by the light of the streetlamps YOU paid for, citizen! They learn the art of vivisection at the PUBLIC library!
We must identify these killers BEFORE they kill, and withhold all public services from them. Only then will the innocent, and our city budgets, be safe from their future crimes.
You do realize that you’re describing a prison, which is the medieval practice that society seems stuck on as the solution to poverty and antisocial behavior…
Take poverty out of that and you’re right. Prison is used to dissuade antisocial and illegal activities by all classes. It’s meant for protection and punishment and has nothing to do with dealing with poverty.
😵💫 is it prison that keeps you from antisocial and illegal activities? A plethora of research shows that it does very little to dissuade these things (that current neuroscience is considering closer to something like epilepsy than personal/moral failings) and does more to keep people locked into poverty, as those with income and wealth can easily skirt our legal systems… but whatever makes you feel good enough to sleep at night bud 🙄
Weird concern troll. No one said that but you straw manned it out of your behind anyways. No we want free housing and our taxes to pay for that and libraries. Not cops to get 400k a year.
Your point makes no sense. Causation does not equal correlation. There are plenty of psychopathic murders that live in mansions, in the suburbs, etc. affordable housing did not cause this man to murder homeless people. And maybe if those poor vulnerable folks had homes they wouldn’t have been such easy targets for a psycho. Have some empathy dude.
oh – you think this guy wouldn’t have killed someone if he lived on the street?
having worked with mentally ill offenders myself and seen it all play out — including murders, this was when Harps was killed, I knew that guy — I can tell you the most important things for good outcomes were housing and medication.
Some of these guys are gonna relapse or yes commit crimes, yes like murder. They do not commit the crimes BECAUSE the city or state (which funded our work hugely reducing recidivism for guys like this) gave them support. They commit the crimes DESPITE that support. But far more don’t commit crimes they would have, because they are getting the stability and care they need to get back on their feet. Don’t forget by lashing out at these programs you are endangering the many, many people who are helped, and whom you don’t hear about because they just quietly got out of the cycle.
Housing first harm reduction absolutely works. It does not work 100% of the time, but nothing does. That’s why you get killers in every income bracket, level of education, and region of the world. Looks like this guy is one of those, whether he’s on the street, in low income housing, or owns a mansion on Mercer Island.
“Housing first harm reduction absolutely works. It does not work 100% of the time…”
Ok, what percentage of the time does it work? No one ever wants to study or talk about that.
No one wants to study them, or you don’t want to do a simple search for the studies? I found these in less than one minute:
dozens of papers summarized here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376871621005470
2022 study in Hawaii https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9783810/
noting studies in 2009 and 2012 showing positive outcomes and huge cost reductions on ERs, police, jail costs etc https://crosscut.com/2019/09/after-15-years-seattles-radical-experiment-no-barrier-housing-still-saving-lives
improves outcomes in Canada https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00117-1/fulltext
And actually every study says “let’s study it more because the evidence is compelling but partial.” So in a way you’re right, we aren’t studying it enough. But don’t be surprised when the studies confirm what housing first and harm reduction advocates say, that it is massively positive despite cases like someone being in the program and then committing crimes.
Please also acknowledge this happened on the current ‘law and order’ City Attorney’s, Mayor’s and City Council’s watch. The highest amount of homicides ever in Seattle, on their watch.
acknowledge facts – as you know, we’re still working to undo Sawant’s mess. Just like how Biden is still working to unravel the Trump disaster.
Stop blaming Sawant
Harrell has literally been on council or mayor for over a decade. He had way more of a hand in this mess than one random district CC
Should we arrest people before they commit crimes? The systems put in place by the previous council has created a huge mess and now the new group has to clean up the mess.
The previous council had the lowest violent crime rate in Seattle history…
It takes years to see the outcomes of many public policies and we are now experiencing the effects. The same will play out for this council as they enact changes, we won’t see the results for years.
You expect a few months of work should have already cleared up decades of allowing psychotic folks and chronic addicts to do as they pleased until some died.. ok then…
Our current city council is still just putting out fires. The real work- making it even possible to get these folks off the streets and into treatment before something tragic happens is going to be some time in coming… coming up with enough space in appropriate facilities for them and altering our policies to even allow for involuntary holds of more than a few days will be a long time in coming.
This slate of councilmembers did not take the oath of office until Jan. 2, 2024. So 2023’s record number of homicides happened under the previous City Council. The rest of your statement is true though!
I moved here from St. Louis where we had as many murders as Seattle has in a year every weekend. This is not a dangerous city and homeless does not equate danger or crime. What it does equate to is a society based on greed that values humans less than made up dollars. It also values discourse far above actions.
Craig, I am also from St. Louis. You’re really going to hate the centrists and fake liberals in this town. This town loves cops. And will bend over backwards for police. It’s sickening. They just elected a council of Republicans-in-sheep clothing.
You bring up an interesting point. The tons of people in Seattle are transplants, like yourself (thinking a back to the beach quote about Ohio here.), replacing the existing raw and explorative culture of the PNW, with new beliefs and ideals. Your fake liberals and centrists newer arrivals likely came from other places colonizing and gentrifying the indigenous belief system. Kudos to you for helping dilute a previously very progressive and forward thinking area.
Are you saying that I should be grateful that my time in the neighborhood from 1998-June 2020 was relatively safe ? Since June 2020, I hear nightly violence and experience disgusting streets. Sorry that you came from St. Louis and accepted the numerous murders every weekend. Maybe you should have stayed there and helped restore a healthy and thriving community. I don’t want to accept setting our safety expectations to rival St. Louis. I want to be better here.
Wrong. Mayor Harrell, City Attorney Davison and Council President Nelson we’re all elected in 2021 and began serving their terms in January of 2022
Deflect all you want. Mayor Harrell, City Attorney Davison and Council President Nelson we’re all elected in 2021 and began serving their terms in January of 2022. The highest number of homicides ever in Seattle happened on their watch.
Council President Nelson was politically isolated as a moderate on an extremely progressive Council until January 2024. She had no ability to advance policy. That was left to the progressive super majority. So, hanging 2022 crime around her neck seems like a stretch. And Davidson and Harrell were hamstrung by the very same progressive Council.
And you’ll continue to bend the facts and make excuses for them next year when the crime stats prove their failures yet again.