As the Seattle Police Department continues to work with law enforcement agencies including the FBI to make an arrest in the case, Garfield High School students found themselves in the midst of another incident of gun violence Friday as they gathered for an end of the school year party just a week after a deadly shooting in the school’s parking lot left a classmate dead.
According to the SPD report on the incident, police were called to the area of Seward Park around 6 PM Friday where Garfield students were gathered for their traditional Purple & White Day party when a vehicle reportedly drove by the crowd and fired a pistol from the vehicle.
Officers already in South Seattle to monitor the annual student party rushed to the scene and secured the area. SPD says there were no injuries and officers found no damage at the park pavillion. Officers collected a single shell casing at the scene.
A search for the vehicle was not immediately successful. There were no reported arrests.
SPD says they remained in the park area as the party continued and provided assistance when a female suffering alcohol poisoning needed to be taken to the hospital. The report says the party wound down due to “the large response of fire department, AMR, and police vehicles.”
The gunfire-marred party came as students returned to school last Tuesday following a two-day campus closure after the deadly shooting that killed 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Paine in the Garfield parking lot off 23rd Ave. SPD says it maintaining an increased presence in the area around Garfield through Friday’s final day of school. Seattle Public Schools and Garfield said they have also increased district security on the campus as families have called for more to be done in response to the killing.
The Garfield PTSA is working on a Safe Schools Action Plan and voted last week to demand the Seattle School Board make a decision on restoring the school resource officer program and placing a dedicated SPD officer at Garfield before the start of the 2024/2025 school year.
Garfield students have remembered Murphy-Paine as they go on with end of the year school activities including prom and graduation despite the tragedy. In a vigil on the school’s sports field, the young man was remembered as a dedicated athlete and friend cut gunned down as he tried to keep the peace.
SPD has asked for patience as detectives continue the effort to arrest the teen shooting suspect caught on school security video opening fire on his victim at point blank range. SPD said it needed time to process “the large volume of digital data (including video and cell phone records)” collected in the case and that its Community Violent Crimes Task Force was working with the FBI, ATF, DEA, and “many local agencies” to assist in the investigation.
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Bring in the national guard
This seems to be a theme… remember when that man business was shot up a year after his death, and his wife had to close down? Not saying they are connected, but the “block spinning” seems to be more than just for the Gram or the game.
Are you referring to The Postman? It’s still there and his widow is running the shop.
Either way. Someone spun the block on his business… just saying.
Someone has to be able to identify who is behind all this gang activity. I feel terribly for the young people who attend this school and am scared for my family. We live nearby and have had multiple drive by shooting behind our home in the early evenings. These are young people (a 15 year old was just arrested for the killing of a 22 year old man in Mt Baker) and they are terrorizing their communities.
Someone from that crowd at Garfield could’ve easily turned in shooter. They have a fear of snitching. Unfortunately, relatives of those suspects that were arrested or killed by police have gone after the people who’ve cooperated with police. For exampl the case of Ngaire Tusi who was lured away from home and killed in a park by the uncle of James Salanoa because she provided info to police related to a rape case James Salanoa was a suspect to. Salanoa died in a police shoot-out in Puyallup in Nov of last year.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/tacoma-woman-killed-for-informing-police-rape-suspects-crime/281-5e54abd0-88d2-454d-8a6f-95e820fb529a
The SPD has a tip line where witnesses can report anonymously, so I don’t think that fear is a valid reason for not reporting the murderer.
Ban guns and take the toys away from the babies. Nothing in the constitution allows this. What well regulated militia do any gun carriers belong to?
Blah, blah, blah… Look, I’m all for banning guns, always have been, but that cat got let out of the bag over two hundred and fifty years ago. The best we can do now is perhaps common sense controls and monitoring ammo sales. And do you think these kids give a rat’s ass about the second amendment, let alone trigger locks, gun safes, gun insurance, or who’s currently on the city council or SCOTUS? These are all stolen guns they are using, not something they popped down to Cabella’s to purchase. If they are not afraid of gunning somebody down in the middle of the day with hundreds of witnesses, they are not going to adhere to some ban.
There’s no taking them away from these kids unless we want to start busting down the doors of suspected gangbangers (which imo we should be), but we all know how the progressives of Seattle would feel about cops doing that. Let alone the fact that they want less cops let alone 1000X more, which is what it would take to start confiscating guns in the advent of a ban (and/or the National Guard). You’ve made your point, over and over again, but it’s just not going to happen. An outright gun ban is nothing more than virtue signaling at this point.
Better would be mindfulness training in schools as a start – disagreements and ‘disrespecting’ do not need to be dealt with violence, and that also starts at home with parents not using corporal punishment as discipline. The no snitching thing has to become history (and the police allowed to do their job). Garfield needs metal detectors and perhaps a no gang colors policy, and maybe even a closed campus lunch policy from now on. Work toward common sense safety and societal measures, as an outright gun ban is a pie in the sky.
Your little lambs shouldn’t have guns and yet they bring them to school which is against the rules, it’s against the law for them to even be in possession of a firearm. If an all out. A started tomorrow, do you think they wouldn’t find a way to play with their toys?
That part of town is just broken. 15 year-old kid was just arrested for murder yesterday.
There is one road that goes into and out of Seward Park. I appreciate some of the talk about increasing patrols and some of the actions taken but as a Garfield mom I am concerned that there seemed to not be a police presence at the road in and out of the park – I am inferring this from police inability to catch the perpetrator. It seems like common sense. Not sure what I am missing.
And you think that SPD just has a spare officer to post there every time there’s a party in the park? They don’t even have enough staff to see to all the crimes that are being committed, much less patrol areas just in case.
I know that they are low staffed and there is a crisis in our police force. This shameful state of affairs is due to the negligent actions of past and city county leaders, and some current ones.
Despite its thinly stretched force, SPD has repeatedly said it is committed to the safety of students at Garfield. At times they have shown a presence at the school. A party several days after a murder involving a firearm should be identified as a high-risk occasion for more gun violence, not just another party in the park.
We have grown too used to shootings involving our children, as if it is just another crime, instead of a giant alarm bell and something that requires urgent, immediate and effective attention with a priority on law enforcement.
These days, there must be a lot of Garfield parents thinking seriously of taking their kids out of that school, but not many can afford private school tuition. Do they have the option of sending their kids to another Seattle high school?