(Image: @Omarisal with permission to CHS)
One person was shot multiple times and bullets hit a childcare center in a driveby shooting reported Monday afternoon at 23rd and Jackson.
The A 4 Apple Learning Center was hit by bullets in the gunfire but arriving police reported no injuries in the building.
Seattle Fire was called to the scene just after 2:30 PM to treat one male with multiple gunshot wounds who was found next to the learning center. The victim was transported to Harborview. UPDATE: Seattle Fire reports its crews treated a 47-year-old at the scene. He was taken to the hospital in stable condition.
Police were searching for a large GMC type vehicle with multiple occupants reported speeding from the scene.
Witness reports said the gunfire was part of an altercation that took place across 23rd Ave along the parking lot and former Starbucks location at the corner. The coffee giant closed the location in 2022 citing safety concerns.
SPD was also responding to Garfield High School after confusion from the 23rd and Jackson shooting several blocks away generated alarm at the school. There were no confirmed shots fired near the school, according to police radio updates. A shots fired incident following a fight at the high school locked down the campus earlier this month.
UPDATE: SPD has posted a brief on the incident and is asking for help in the investigation:
Detectives are investigating after a male was shot and seriously injured in the Central District Monday Afternoon. Shortly after 2:30 p.m., dispatch received a call about a 47-year-old male shot in the 300 block of 23rd Avenue South. Police arrived and a found male with multiple gunshot wounds. Officers provided aid until the Seattle Fire Department arrived. The victim was transported to Harborview Medical Center in serious condition. No suspects have been identified, and it is not known what led up to the shooting. Gun Violence Reduction Unit detectives are leading the investigation. The Seattle Police Department will have extra patrol emphasis in the area including officers and community service officers. If anyone has information, please contact SPD’s Violent Crimes Tip Line at (206) 233-5000.
UPDATE x2: The learning center has released a statement and images from inside after today’s shooting saying the incident occurred in front of children during circle time and that city leaders and the property owners of the parking lot, Vulcan Real Estate, need to do more for public safety in the area:
UPDATE x3: District 3 candidate Joy Hollingsworth has criticized the city’s response to the shooting and says officials must act with “urgency and purpose” to address the incident.
“For years, Central Area small businesses and community leaders have asked for help from City Hall to keep our families, kids, and neighborhoods safe,” the statement from the Hollingsworth campaign reads. “Instead of action, we hear excuses, we’ve been ignored, or we’re told that we are overreacting.”
The 23rd and Jackson parking lot has been the location of multiple shootings over recent years including the June 2021 shooting that took the life of 21-year-old Sultan Ujaama.
When will this violence stop. A learning center was just shot up today in the middle of crossfire on 23rd & Jackson. Who is going to stand for the victims and our community members who are impacted by this violence daily. If our kids won’t make you take a stand nothing will. pic.twitter.com/kFbscN7NvS
— Omari Salisbury (@Omarisal) October 16, 2023
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
This makes me so furious. I drive by there every day and smile as parents run their kids into the learning center. I was almost driving through at the time of the shooting.
Shut. That parking lot. Down. Close all of the businesses. Move the bus stop. Let Vulcan dig a hole and turn it into a giant secure building. The lot It is one of the biggest blights on Seattle and needs to be addressed. Now! Whoever has a plan for this has my D3 vote
Agreed 100 percent. Hollingsworth actually spoke about this very corner when I saw her at a community forum in August. She said the same thing
The candidate story one below has replies that say crime is at an all-time low and things like this are rare as we are a very safe city…anything else is fear mongering. Shootings and crime in this lot are on going. Enforcement of gun laws already passed need to be strongly enforced and acted upon. People that shoot at other people need to be put on jail or a timeout.
Gentrification racist gov policy benign neglect, really destroys a neighborhood. China town right in the area NEVER GENTRIFIED, when the city INTENTIONALLY Destroys A GROUP OF PPL this is the result. The mass murder in Chinatown back in the 80s didn’t have anyone saying shut Chinatown down. Seems like Seattle has an issue with Black people. That Entire area was owned and purchased by Black ppl late 1800’s early 1900’s . When there is a racist city government governing to destroy ONE group this is the fall out. Instead of closing that corner put a BIG Neon sign there congratulating Seattle for creating the violence we now see in this hopeless homeless drug infested nihilistic environment we pretend to dress up and call community. Funny the more Black restaurants I see there the less actual Black ppl I see. Remember the philly cheese steak owner on 23 and Union found murdered in his car it’s an IKEs weed spot now. Seattle’s war on American Decendants of Slavery must stop we have no choice. Violence creates violence
Are you trying to justify the violence or trying to explain what you believe is the cause of the violence?
Quite a polemic. Anyone remember 23rd and Union or 23rd and Madison in the 1980s?
Banning guns is the only solution to our gun problem. We have to choose a peaceful society by not allowing people to have guns. As long as guns are allowed this will continue as it has for my entire life and for generations to come. This is normal news in a society that allows people to have guns.
Everyone currently tethered to earth knows that will never, ever happen. I don’t know why you insist on spinning yourself in circles reposting this same take over and over again here on the blog.
I see too much confusion about other elements of gun violence somehow being the issue. There should at least be one voice that highlights reality. People can talk till their blue in the face about all the things that could or should happen after gun violence has already occurred but nothing will prevent gun violence besides getting rid of guns. That fact should at least be represented in the conversation. What’s the point in talking about anything else?
Have you ever stopped and asked yourself how this would play out? As much of a problem as we have with gun culture in America, your perpetual driveling on about getting rid of guns has become a joke around here. Do you think that making guns illegal is gonna result in 433 million guns just getting turned in? Do you think that the people most likely to use a gun in nefarious ways will be anywhere near the front of that line? The reason people are talking about other solutions is that your solution ISN’T A SOLUTION. A solution needs to be feasible. You are sitting at the back of the sinking boat with a spoon trying to throw the water overboard, yelling at everyone for not doing the same.
Can you imagine the kind of civil war we would have if you asked authorities to go house to house and collect guns? Do you not think that most of the people trained in firearms (police/military) will be the least likely to be sympathetic to the argument? You are screaming into the void, and it hurts everyone’s ears. Shut up. You are just being stubborn. Use your mind.
Haha.. So the boat just sinks? Definitely sounds like you’re no vote for society. That’s a big part of our problem. Phasing them out over 20, 50 years? Literally anything that gets guns gone from society even if it takes time – we have no commitment to this. They serve 0 purpose in a society. They just enable suicide and murder. What’s the point?
KMA, that’s not what I said, pal. Guns are a tool that make plenty of sense in certain places in our country, like for instance, where dangerous wildlife are common. You’d know if you hadn’t lived your whole life in cities. I’m all for removing guns inside city limits, where it’s feasible, people lean anti-gun anyway, they are more often used for bad things, and there are already fewer of them. Anyone living in very rural areas will see your argument as foolish, unnecessary, and potentially tyrannical. They will fight you, and you won’t have a gun. I’m just saying you don’t have a chance of actually getting rid of them, and you probably need to meet people that aren’t bleeding heart progressives once in a while and have a conversation.
Rural gun owners attacking me with a gun wouldn’t be very responsible gun owner of them. Kind of another point that we can’t handle having guns, if people are too emotionally reactive to criticism they in turn to fight or attack someone with a gun. That’s not what a responsible gun owner should do. I understand what your saying however. I would still point out that as long as guns are around we will have shootings of humans with guns. We shouldn’t be so ignorant to claim the police can turn up after a shooting as a solution to shootings that have already occurred or perhaps penalizing individuals who have shot other people can somehow revive a dead shooting victim. Guns are the problem in these instances that we will continue to see on this blog and that should be the only take away every single time.
But I thought Harrell, Nelson, and Davison were going to stop crime????
I voted for all three individuals and I appreciate and approve the work they are trying to do to clean up the city and ‘stop crime.’ I will continue to vote for moderate candidates that are focused on stopping public public drug use, public tent/rv camping, and support harsher penalties for crimes that involve the use of a gun. Sorry, I’m so done with my neighborhood being garbage and hearing gun shots ring out. I’m also not giving up on Seattle so I ain’t leaving – but I will vote and be vocal to speak up against poorly thought through progressive policies.
Nelson’s one vote on Council does not enable legislation to pass. The majority Progressives, Morales, Mosqueda, Lewis, Herbold, and Sawant, habitually block attempts to address these issues. Hence the difficulty getting Council to pass Nelson’s proposal to adopt the State’s new law defining public drug use as a gross misdemeanor prosecutable by Davidson, the City Attorney. We need more Harrells, Nelsons, and Davidsons to actually begin to address the crime problems in Seattle.
Agree.
Morales and her ilk won’t enforce laws until the underlying cause of lawbreaking is resolved. Like sometime next century.
Right? That’s my problem with our city council. They’ve been talking about addressing the root causes since I moved here in the 90s, yet we keep electing them and the root causes only get worse.
If you can’t fix the underlying issues, you have to find other ways to address them, like increased law enforcement or increased police presence in key areas, because regardless of what the oblivious white progressive dudes in the comments section claim, public safety has been a major issue for those of us who actually live in the area who are easier targets based on our gender, size, and orientation. We need to bring back public nuisance laws and stop enabling these people to continue terrorizing the neighborhood.
And people wonder why Joy Hollingsworth said “one” on scale of 1-10.
Hudson was at our door awhile back handing out fliers. I was busy and getting ready to leave so didn’t engage with her (my vote is soundly with Hollingsworth).
A week or so later bullets would fly in the middle of the day, about the same time Hudson was here, hitting at least one parked car in front of our house (31st and Yesler). Wouldn’t it have been somewhat ironic if I’d had to pull her inside and shelter on the floor together? I wonder if she’d change her tune then? Otherwise it’s just more college age, Progressive word salads from her, imo, and I heard enough of that from Sawant to know it’s more performative than pragmatic.
Increasing the police won’t magically decrease random crime of course – that is a societal issue. But it may decrease response times, increase police morale (and therefore a more positive response to community), and better after the fact detective work.
1 correction to this comment, sawant never even bothered to comment on crime in her district, including the shooting of a 2 year old baby girl across the street.
Preventing crime does not get headlines and therefore held no interest for sawant, can’t wait for Hollingsworth to get into office and start to address the concerns of her constituency.
I cannot f’ing wait, we cannot f’ing wait.
I encourage everyone to watch the Hollingsworth-Hudson debate. It is on YouTube. It is clear that Hollingsworth is more prepared to tackle the issues that the Seattle community cares about, and she seemed very knowledgeable and level headed. I love that Hollingsworth grew up in our district and has strong community ties. She outlined several well thought out concepts that could truly make an impact, especially in the CD. Hudson could hardly articulate details about the topics that she has supposedly dedicated her career to. I was born and raised in our district and went to Garfield High School. I believe that Hollingsworth will make a positive impact!