Good morning.
Thank you for joining us here today, and I'm sorry
that we have to gather under such tragic circumstances.
I'm going to share the basics of what we know,
and after my remarks, Chief Scoggins and Chief
Barnes will be sharing additional detail.
Shortly after 6 p.m.
last night, officers responded
to the sound of gunfire.
They were assigned to support Bite of Seattle and were on
scene within seconds and took one suspect into custody.
No police weapons were discharged.
We believe that two people exchanged gunfire outside
the Seattle Center Armory.
Seven victims were caught in the crossfire
with a possible eighth.
And again, Chief Scoggins will be providing more detail about
the victims after my remarks.
A 19-year-old man, a 44-year-old man, and a
56-year-old woman were killed.
Two died at the scene and a third passed away at
Harborview Medical Center.
Official identification will come from the King County
Medical Examiner's Office.
The Seattle Police Department detained a 15-year-old juvenile
in connection with the shooting.
The teen was booked into the Judge Patricia H.
Clark Children and Family Justice
Center for investigation for firearms violations
and first-degree assault.
We believe this teenager opened fire in the crowd, but details
are still under investigation.
This individual will have a first appearance court
hearing at 1.30 p.m.
today. And again, we have not
formally arrested anyone for investigation of homicide.
We appreciate your patience, and we are releasing
information when we can.
Please remember that we are only 17 hours into this case.
I know there have been a lot of questions about this, so
I do want to briefly address the timeline last night.
At Seattle Center, we had an active investigation ongoing,
including a continued search for a possible second suspect.
and SPD conducted a briefing with elected officials online
at 9 p.m., including many people standing here today.
We were advised that it was better for me and others
not to be on the scene.
Once it became clear that SPD was ready to brief the press,
I, the governor, Congresswoman Jayapal, made our way
rapidly to Seattle centers so that we would be able
to be there to share that information with you all.
What are we doing right now?
So right now this is an all hands on deck response.
Investigating this tragedy has been taken
on by nearly every part of our police department.
Our human services department victim advocates team is working
with SPD to support the needs of the victims and their families.
And we are so grateful for their incredible work and dedication.
Two victim advocates work alongside SPD detectives
in the violent crimes unit it to help survivors navigate
the criminal legal system, understand their rights, and
gain access to crime victims' compensation,
among other resources.
Community Passageways is reaching out to
the affected families immediately and offering
in-home support to help families to understand and navigate
hospital, legal, victim support, and other systems.
The organization is also convening an emergency meeting
to assess the possibility of retaliation, identify
ongoing safety concerns, and help the people involved
to navigate those risks.
Support is tailored to each family's circumstances.
Our immediate priorities are to help families remain
safe, reduce the risk of future violence, and
make sure that they have practical and emotional
support during the first days following the shooting.
I want to acknowledge that this has been an especially
tough week here in Seattle.
Thursday night there was a shooting near
Aurora in North Seattle, again in Capitol Hill on
Friday night, and now at the Seattle Center last night.
While the police department continues their investigations,
we cannot let up on implementing a multi-pronged
gun violence strategy.
We know that gun violence can be prevented.
Evidence-based strategies have proven results in
cities across the nation.
We know that a successful gun violence reduction
strategy is based on strong partnerships between
community leaders who design and implement neighborhood-based
prevention strategies, social service providers
focused on the root causes of violence, community members with
moral authority over group members who can
deliver a credible message against violence,
community members who can interrupt cycles of
violence and de-escalate tensions before they erupt,
and law enforcement who can hold group members
accountable if they decide not to put down their guns.
The City of Seattle is partnering with state,
federal, and local government partners to launch a gun
violence reduction strategy that will build on
programs, services, and law enforcement efforts already
underway. We will be bringing on an expert in gun
violence reduction including youth violence prevention who
will partner with city staff and our community-based
partners. Chief Barnes and the Seattle Police Department
will be implementing near-term strategies to
amplify our summer efforts and I'll let the chief
describe those momentarily
we are committed to working in impacted neighborhoods
across our city from Rainier Beach to the Chinatown
International District and Little Saigon to Capitol
Hill to North Aurora to address both the immediate
impacts and the root causes of gun violence.
And I also want to express appreciation for our city
attorney Erica Evans for her leadership in
beginning to use extreme risk protection orders to take
guns away from people at high risk of committing violence.
No one should have to fear for their safety or their
life before attending an event, gathering with friends,
or experiencing our city.
No parent should have to worry that their kid won't come
home at the end of the day.
My heart is with the victims of last night's tragedy, and
their families, and everyone who is suffering for their loss.
And I also know that many people who were not physically
injured will carry what they experienced yesterday
with them for a long time.
The terror and the trauma of gun violence reaches
far beyond those who are struck by the bullets.
I want to express profound gratitude to our police
officers who were on the scene and responded immediately and
with care and decisiveness, and to everyone at the
Seattle Police Department who has been working nonstop
since this tragedy occurred.
And our Seattle firefighters and the medical personnel
at Harborview who treated the injured,
as well as Seattle Center and event staff and bystanders who
helped people to reach safety and provided aid in
terrifying circumstances.
We are in this together, and I'm going to turn the mic
over to Chief Scoggins to provide some more information.
Good morning.
I want to lead with expressing condolences to all of
the individuals and the families who lost loved ones.
I'm going to cover the list of the individuals who passed
away and who are still injured, and I'll start out first
with those who passed away.
On scene, a 19-year-old male was declared deceased at the scene.
On scene, a 44-year-old male was declared deceased at the scene.
Our paramedics transported a 56-year-old female in serious
condition who passed away at Harborview Medical Center.
So those are the three individuals who passed away, two
on scene and one at Harborview.
Seattle Fire medics and EMTs treated a 40-year-old
female with minor injuries who declined to be
transported to the hospital.
So treated but not transported.
A 39-year-old female in stable condition was transported
to Harborview and has since been discharged from
Harborview Medical Center.
A 2-year-old male was transported to Harborview
by Seattle Fire Paramedics and is still at Harborview
in satisfactory condition.
A 23-year-old male was transported in stable condition
by paramedics to Harborview and has since been discharged.
And last night, a 27-year-old male reported to UW Medical
Center Montlake in satisfactory condition with a gunshot wound
that has since been discharged.
And that's possibly the eighth patient, but SPD
has to follow up and interview this individual.
Now I'll pass it to Chief Barnes.
Certainly last night was a tragedy.
It's becoming all too familiar in this community
and many communities as well.
Any loss of life due to gun violence is unacceptable,
as is the terror it causes our community.
Our department has been taking a lot of steps to address
gun violence this year, and those steps will be increased
following this tragic incident last night at Seattle Center.
An incident in which three people suffered fatal injuries.
Our hearts as a department, as a city, as a county, as a state,
goes out to those victims and all who were
affected by this tragedy.
Officers were assigned to work the Bite of Seattle event.
The staffing was adequate.
The placement was good.
That's one of the first things
that I checked on when I got the first call around 630.
And because of such, we believe that additional loss
or injury of life occurred.
Our officers, as well as members from the fire department,
medic team, ran toward gunfire in an attempt to render
life-saving aid and to disarm someone who was actively
firing a weapon into a crowd.
We believe that the bullets that were fired were from
two individuals who appeared to be firing at one another.
And as the mayor stated, a 15-year-old suspect
was taken into custody.
We have a full complement of police officers working
on this case, as well as professional staff.
They work till about 4 a.m.
They're at home now getting some rest.
They've been replaced by officers who are working
now, professional staff who are working now.
We had our regularly scheduled 10 a.m.
gun call, which is a gun screening,
where we analyze every case of gun violence that occur
in our city twice a week.
We did that today in an attempt to bring everyone up to speed
and so that everyone can participate in
this particular case.
We will leave no stone unturned to bring all of those who
may be involved to justice.
In Seattle, the problem of gun violence is
worsened by small groups.
We have small groups that appear to be at odds with each other,
and in our city, 0.01% of the population is connected
to 52% of our shootings, most of which are young people,
which is why our department partners with community members,
with our mayor's office, with our prosecutors and
our federal partners, some of which are here today,
to find the underlying causes of this.
with us today is Bishop Witherspoon.
He meets with me and a group of
pastors almost monthly to talk about how we can help
and come together as a community to not only end gun violence,
but to wrap our arms around kids that may be on the brink.
This is very important work, I believe.
This is the work that I got into policing to do.
The department alone cannot fix the issue of gun violence.
We need the entire system, the entire community to
come together to address this now.
There is more work to be done but I believe
that we can do it if we do it together.
Again my heart goes out to everyone who
was there, everyone who witnessed the gun violence.
I want to thank all of our partners who are on the scene
as well as our officers and professional staff but
more importantly if you were there or you saw
something or you witnessed something or you recorded
something I want to give our violent crimes tip line
which is two zero six two three three five thousand
or you can simply call nine-one-one with your
information so we can screen that with an investigator
Thank you.
Okay, I think we're happy to take some questions.
Can you clear up, Mayor, you put out information
yesterday suggesting that two people were in custody.
We're hearing that there's one person in custody.
It's unclear if that shooter is still on the loose or
if the shooter is deceased.
Can you clear that up?
Yeah, so what I'll say, I think in complex situations like
this, information flies around.
And so that initial report that we got of two suspects
in custody was incorrect.
And that's part of why it's taken us a while to be able
to stand here and say this is accurate information.
In terms of the status of the potential second suspect,
I'm going to bump that question over to Chief Barnes.
Yeah, we were receiving information that a second
suspect potentially ran toward the IMAX theater.
So that may have been where some of the confusion were.
We used our SWAT team as well as other resources
to slowly and meticulously search that area
just in case someone was hiding out there.
We did not find anyone.
In fact, that search really ended probably about 15 minutes
before the press conference last night,
which could be one of the causes of the delay that
you spoke about earlier.
So is there a second shooter on the loose right now?
There is a second shooter.
We're trying to identify who that person is.
Our officers need your help.
If someone saw something or perhaps
if someone has some video, we need to identify that person.
We do believe that there was an exchange of gunfire.
We have one person in custody that our
officers took into custody.
We need to figure out who that other person is.
Chief, you know that people are angry that this was five
hours that your department waited to tell people that
there is a shooter on the loose.
Why wait five hours to tell people?
And then here we are 17 hours later, and you still
don't have that person.
Yeah, again, again, you're right.
We do not have that person in custody, but we
wanted to get it right.
Again, we were searching the IMAX theater.
It was possible that that person could have ran in there.
If that person would have been taken into custody, that would
have been our second shooter.
But we're still looking for it.
We understand that people are angry.
You should be.
Everyone should be angry.
But with that anger, you should also be asking yourself,
what can I do to prevent this?
We have to start partnering together.
We have to start working together on this
issue of gun violence and getting information
out and providing opportunities for people
so that things like this do not happen.
If I had really a crystal ball, it would be that we could
work with our young people, work with our groups,
and make sure that they understand that this
is not the way to go.
This incident affected a lot of people.
Internally, people who visited our amazing city
were just coming off a very successful event with the FIFA
where we had no incidents, and to have something
like this this weekend is definitely unacceptable.
But Chief, the mayor's office put out misinformation,
and that is serious.
You know, as people are trying to put the pieces together, is
it safe for me to go outside?
Is there a second shooter?
Do you take that seriously?
And this question would go directly to the mayor.
What can be done to assure that never happens again?
Let me say this.
Right, let me say this.
Yes, we take our jobs very seriously.
And so we want to get out information as early
and as often as possible.
It is unfortunate that sometimes, in any situation,
early information is sometimes incorrect.
But what do you do when that happens?
You correct that information and then you move forward.
How do we get better?
We get better by going back.
We do after-action reviews, which we will do on this case,
and we'll try to ensure that the information is correct.
But we have to get something out to our community when we can.
Chief, can you clear on last night?
No, you go ahead, Mike.
Were you in town yesterday?
I was not in town yesterday.
I wish that I had a crystal ball and we could schedule
gun violence, but we can't.
Yesterday I was in Dallas at the National Organization
of Black Law Enforcement Executives Conference.
It's their 50th anniversary.
At that conference, two members from our community
were being honored.
One of our pastors was given an award for his
work in the community, and one of our officers, one of
our CSOs, was given an award, and I wanted to
be there for that.
That's why I was not here.
Do you have video of this incident from
the Seattle Center?
You reviewed it yet?
I do not know if we have video of it.
I have not had a briefing on that just yet.
I'm not sure where the camera placement are.
Those, the video unit, they're probably at home asleep now.
They'll give me another second briefing this afternoon.
We'll be able to answer that question.
We're going to let the mayor answer the question.
Hang on.
Yeah, I'll just say I've been told that the Seattle
Center does have cameras, and we are in the process
of pulling out footage to see if there's anything
relevant in there.
Well, to back up on that, too, you know, the CCTV cameras
have been a real *unintelligible*.
This could have happened in the Stadium District,
and you decided to turn those off pending an audit.
How do you feel now?
The safety of the residents of Seattle is my highest
responsibility and I take that very seriously.
In the course that we've charted on the CCTV cameras, which
is a matter of public record, that means balancing various
kinds of safety, safety for different communities,
and that is the motivation behind the course
that we're taking.
Chief, I'm a follow-up.
Could you reconcile for me?
Last night we were told public is in no danger,
nothing to worry about here.
And then on the other hand, we hear that there is still
a second suspect at large.
How do you reconcile the two of those?
Yeah, I think you may have been, you know,
whenever there's a shooting and we're looking for
suspects and that person is not in custody,
there's always a danger, right?
And so what we want to get out to the public is
that the interior scene, what we call our inner
perimeter, was secure.
I believe that's the message that we were trying to get out.
We had a second scene that was only cleared a couple of
minutes before the actual press.
And so we're trying to get information out
as often as we can.
But our focus is on the search for the suspect.
And so we will certainly, as I stated before, we
have no problem with doing after action reviews,
understanding how to work better with our
communication strategy, making sure you get the
information that you need so that you can do your job,
which is what?
To ensure that our public is informed on
public safety matters because I believe that
the public has a right to participate in their
own public safety.
They can only do that if we get our information out,
and that's what we're going to try to do.
Do you have an idea of motive, Is there any indication
that this is related to gang activity?
I don't know if it's gang activity, but
certainly group activity.
We have to determine the nexus behind what happened.
Obviously, with someone so young, we have to determine
if this person is a part of a group or a part of a gang,
what the ongoing conflict was, but we're going to do that.
Our officers are going to work.
We do have an intelligence section that's going
to work to identify everyone that was involved
to see if there is some connection between the two.
But then once we do that, we have to verify
that connection.
Possible that one of the victims that
died last night is the second shooter.
It is possible, but we do not know
that that is the case until we do
the investigation.
We will make sure again you just stated that accuracy
is important, so we want to take our time and
make sure that we're accurate.
Go ahead.
Two people shooting at each other is a
lot different than one person firing
indiscriminately. I think this is the
first time we're hearing that, 17 hours later.
What commitment do you all make as elected leaders
to make that transparency earlier in the process
so people aren't waiting three to five hours without
any sort of clarity?
Yeah, I'll just reiterate that there's a tension here between
providing information quickly and providing information
accurately, right?
So if we had been reporting up to the minute everything
that we were hearing and the swirl that
happened last night, there would have been a lot
of inaccuracies out there that would have confused
people and that we then would have had to correct.
So we are managing this tension, and we are doing the best that
we can to provide accurate information in a timely manner
without increasing confusion.
Is there a reason Seattle wasn't used?
You have a text from your emergency response
where you can, during an emergency, send text messages
out to a lot of people.
Is there a reason that no text messages were sent out?
It seems like that could have been a way to
notify people quickly.
I'm not sure that that's a tool that we normally use
in situations like this.
Well, it claims the website says it's used for emergencies.
It seems like it's probably a pretty serious emergency.
I think we were focusing on getting accurate information
out through our normal communications channels
and also not creating undue fear and confusion.
We were told on the scene around 11 o'clock,
right before the press conference started,
that they're waiting for dignitaries to show up.
So a lot of people in the public right now believe
the reason why there was a five-hour delay
was because we had politicians who wanted to
get in front of the cameras.
I want to get you on the record.
Is that true?
Was the delay at all to do with because you needed politicians
to get in front of the camera?
No, that is absolutely not the case.
Okay, so as I stated before, last night at Seattle Center,
what we had was a scene of an active investigation
where SPD was searching the grounds for a
possible second suspect.
And there are times when elected officials'
presence is not helpful, and that was one of those times.
We don't want our law enforcement distracted
taking care of elected officials when they have work to do.
...direction from Governor Ferguson's office
or from the Capitol's office to wait to do the press conference
until they got to the scene?
As soon as we coordinated with SPD
and agreed that it was time to talk to the media,
as soon as we knew that we were going to be doing that,
I and Governor Ferguson and Congresswoman Jayapal
arrived on the scene within minutes.
So you can say his office unequivocally
did not tell you to wait?
No, absolutely not.
So then what was the delay?
Because there's basic information,
and I know SPD has gotten training on this
and paid a pretty penny for it.
What was the delay in the basics, the ABCs and the
1, 2, 3s of what happened?
You had people running, you had people shot on the ground with
bullet holes in their backs, covered in white sheets,
and we are sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting.
The only thing that we had was a tweet and
people who were afraid and a lot of information on
social media filling the vacuum.
So why is it that citizens in the city of Seattle
had to wait for almost five hours to get answers
It's something so serious that's made national headlines.
Yeah, I mean, my office put out a statement at 8:30, which again
included an initial inaccuracy.
So again, this speaks to the tension between providing
information early and providing it accurately.
So we, along with SPD, were trying to manage that tension
and we got information out to all as soon as we
possibly could.
I think that's pretty good.