(Image courtesy Converge Media)
The school was placed into lockdown during the police response
Seattle Police and Seattle Fire were responding to a shooting involving a student outside Garfield High School during the school’s Thursday lunch break.
SPD confirmed it is investigating a shooting but provided no additional information.
UPDATE: SPD reports a 17-year-old suffered multiple gunshot wounds in the incident and was transported to Harborview in serious condition.
UPDATE x2: SPD says the teen has died:
Harborview Medical Center has confirmed that despite all lifesaving efforts, the 17-year-old student of today’s shooting at Garfield High School succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced deceased.
Callers reported gunfire outside the 23rd Ave school just after 12:30 PM.
Police were gathering security video to identify any suspects. According to East Precinct radio updates, video showed multiple students who appeared to be armed in the fracas.
UPDATE: Students on the campus were kept at Garfield until police gave the go ahead for a “staggered release” after 3 PM. Multiple SPD vehicles were seen in the area to provide added security as students were released from the campus and 23rd Ave in front of the school was closed to incoming traffic.
The 23rd Ave campus has found itself in the middle of the city’s ongoing struggles with gun violence. In April, a shooter reported firing from an SUV sunroof opened fire on another vehicle as students unloaded from a nearby Metro bus and ran for cover on the nearby campus. There were no injuries.
Seattle leaders held a series of public safety meetings in March amid a continuing surge in gun violence including an afternoon shootout between two vehicles that month that sent a 17-year-old Garfield student caught in the crossfire to the hospital with serious injuries to her leg.
UPDATE: In an afternoon press conference at the nearby Mount Calvary Christian Center, Mayor Bruce Harrell and newly installed interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr addressed Thursday’s shooting and said police presence will be increased in the area.
In his remarks, Harrell blamed the “surge” of guns that is putting too many firearms on his streets while also promising that increased patrols will not mean over-policing.
“Until we address the basic fact that there are too many guns on our streets, and it is too easy to get access to a gun, we will never make sustainable progress on this issue,” Harrell said in a statement issued by his office later in the day.
In March following the fatal shooting of a woman behind the 23rd Ave AutoZone, Harrell called for a state ballot initiative to give the city more leeway to regulate gun ownership
The city’s new interim police chief, meanwhile, said she could not find words to describe the pain around Thursday’s shooting but said the investigation was moving forward quickly.
Police say there are searching for a “high school-age” suspect in the shooting.
The mayor and Chief Rahr said police were limited in the ability to question student witnesses and asked any adults with information to call the SPD tip line at 206-233-5000.
UPDATE: There will be no school at Garfield on Friday or Monday, Principal Tarance Hart announced Thursday night:
- Classes at Garfield have been canceled on Friday and Monday. We anticipate students will return to classes on Tuesday, June 11.
- All after-school activities have been canceled (June 6 – 10).
- No district transportation will be provided on Friday, June 7, and Monday, June 10.
“Each time I must report an incident of gun violence on or near our campus, it is tough, but this message is the hardest yet to send,” Hart wrote in a message to families. “I am deeply saddened by the violence in our community and profoundly disturbed by the devastating impact it continues to have on our school. This senseless act has left us all shaken.”
Hart says students will be able to access confidential support services and meal services at the Meredith Mathews East Madison YMCA, 1700 23rd Ave, both days.
UPDATE: KUOW has a first-hand account of the shooting aftermath from Christle Young, a mother of a Garfield student and former police officer, who rushed to provide first aid to the young victim and says she is pulling her son from the school.
“I’m just not comfortable sending my son here. It doesn’t seem like they’re equipped to handle situations like this,” Young said.
UPDATE: Parent’s are organizing a “Silent March to End Gun Violence” starting at 9 AM Friday at the Garfield campus with plans to walk to SoDo’s Seattle Public Schools headquarters. UPDATE x2: The march has been rescheduled to Monday afternoon to coincide with a SPS board meeting.
Meanwhile, the school’s planned June 8th prom will go on.
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Ban all guns.
That hasn’t worked in France. Or nyc or Chicago.
Guns are legal to own in France.
OTOH it has worked pretty darn well in the UK, Australia, Norway and New Zealand, who responded to mass shootings with common sense gun restrictions and Japan, who’s had them in place for years. No, there aren’t zero guns/shootings in these countries and no, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other forms of violence that don’t involve guns, but it does mean there’s a whole lot fewer shootings.
The obvious reason it hasn’t worked in NYC or Chicago is that we need a federal ban, not state-by-state, which is fairly useless. Although we don’t actually know how useless, since Congress refuses to let gun control measures be studied.
NYC’s shootings rate is pretty damn low compared to the past…what hasn’t worked exactly?
I’d be pretty happy with France’s gun shootings rate…
I assume you also support quick and swift punitive action for those committing crimes involving guns. ..like multi-year, one strike, you’re out detainment. Removal from the community because you are an anti-social hazard, for many, many years. If guns are so abhorrent to own by banning all, swift and extreme, justice has to happen.
A person would have already killed someone using a gun by the time we would be initiating a penalty on them. Our thick skulls need to understand that we must prevent gun violence before it happens. We can’t just lock people up after the fact, a person is already dead at that point and it is too late. Ban guns from society and we won’t have dead people from gun violence every day or people to warehouse in prisons forever either.
That’s not true. Police find guns on people all the time before they do anything with them.
Again with the simplistic and utterly unrealistic solution to a complex problem. Thanks for chiming in!
Keep telling yourself that and I’ll keep seeing you in the comments of these same American stories for ever.
We’re far closer to a full ban on abortions in this country than a simple and incredibly reasonable ban on guns.
Suggesting that banning guns in as many ways as possible is “utterly unrealistic” is nonsense. Banning them is not just common sense, but simple policy. They are functionally murder dildos…pretty much just a single use and a single function. What’s so complex???
The April shooting reporting is incorrect. Students were waiting to board a metro bus after school and one student was shot in the leg, requiring an extensive surgery. Two student shot in a two month timeframe.
https://youtu.be/gx1LxKIQ5V0?si=qoGKevn3S9rT-z_-
The shooting you are referring to took place in March:
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2024/03/teen-hit-in-shooting-outside-garfield-high-school/
Do you think Bruce and Co will lick it before 2026?
There were 17 Seattle Police units that flew past those of us traveling on 12th Ave on their way to Garfield.
For some reason teenagers getting shot in the central district in broad day light is something new to me. Growing up on the C.D. We had cases of gun violence, but usually not in broad day light. Nor this many lockdowns.
I continually read on this forum that the CD was worse in the 80s-90s. I’ve lived on the same block within jurisdiction of Garfield for HS kids, I don’t recall day time shootings as happening so frequently as compared to the previous years, But, I continuously read that the area is much better than it was. ..but at least we aren’t as bad as St. Louis or Baltimore for crime. So I suppose Garfield is fine.. we aren’t as bad as other areas. ..sorry kids, crime is down in Seattle, look at the nationwide stats.
I think you hear that from people who didn’t actually live here… I moved to the Union area in 97, and no, people weren’t shooting up the neighborhood with the boldness and regularity of the last year or two then.
You did qualify ‘so frequently’ but run me through January 12th 1995 and any similarities to the latest shooting at Garfield.
Regardless of whether misguided folks are downplaying severity of crime to avoid hearing out yet another ‘we need to make this more like a prison’ (or property interests, none admit that one though even when they use it as reference to civic health), every time one of you old heads is like ‘it didn’t use to be that bad’ it sounds like testament to emotional memory fading over time, not statement of fact or frequency.
One of my crime anecdotes about moving to Seattle in 2003 is that the first week, there was a shooting outside my apartment in Belltown. Drug deal with one wounded but stable. I didn’t know how it was 20 years prior, I didn’t know what it would be like 20 years after, but I did know that at net present, people get in fights about drugs in Belltown and shoot one another over it. The frame of reference that predates me did no help in perception of what I was inhabiting.
And my own frame of reference to 2003 and my first week figuring out the rest of my life…I’m not going to tell people one way or another if it was better or worse but just that it happened.
The during the day shootings near any school is new. During the late 80s and early 90s there were drive by shootings, mainly at night or in more remote areas.
My brother and I went to garfield, we had quite a few shootings up there in the 90s. Year before I got in, 4 kids were shot in the hallway in drug deal. lot of guns around the school, people got robbed a lot walking around the neighborhood. drive by took out the bbq on cherry we would go to for lunch sometimes, and of course philly’s best, that corner was bad for a long time. Not saying it’s better or worse now but it has been an issue on and off for a long time.
When I went to Garfield in the late 1980’s. It was right about when all the gangs started coming up from California. I witnessed a drive by shooting that happened in broad daylight. One of students was walking back from the store on Cherry when somebody told her to “get down”. She hid behind a car and told me she could hear the bullets hitting a fence behind her. She was obviously pretty shaken. I heard the gunshots and jokingly said “it’s a drive-by guys”. Then random people from the neighborhood started showing up, visibly shaken, and asked someone to call the cops. I didn’t go back to school for a week.
It is new–very new.
do or do not there is no try
This is a monthly occurrence now over by there. Abhorrent.
Nice work, gun nuts.
The people shooting kids are not the ones who would be giving up their guns if the laws changed.
What has happened to spds gang unit? Why do prosecutors and judges frequently release gun crime committers with no bail??
Always the same tired excuses.
The SPD gang unit was probably deemed too militaristic and also were probably doing some things that would be considered racist or profiling.
The release of gun crime commuters is the one that I don’t get. Using a gun in commission of a crime used to always add a few years to the sentence. In won’t even hold you over night in King County anymore.
Something similar to that is why the metal detectors were removed.
“. According to East Precinct radio updates, video showed multiple students who appeared to be armed in the fracas.”
Why in hell are students allowed to have guns during the school day? Don’t they have to go through a metal detector on entering the building? If not, that should happen asap. And maybe it’s time that they not be allowed out of the building when school is in session. I realize these are extreme measures, but these violent times require them, unfortunately.
And why were police restricted from interviewing student witnesses? That is ridiculous!
From what I remember they don’t have any metal detectors, and very limited security.
Police are restricted from interviewing minors per RCW 13.40. 740 which passed a year or 2 ago.
OK, then, that law needs to be repealed! There is no reason that a student, with appropriate support (parent, lawyer), can’t be interviewed. There is no doubt that at least one student (or more) knows who killed this young man. Hopefully, he/she will step up and call the SPD tip line.
That is the point of the law, consultation with a lawyer.
I dont’ think the shooter was a student. It just says he was “high school aged”. Probably just a loser whose parent(s) doesn’t give a shit about him enough to make him go to school. They are fine with him just being a murderous thug.
Are you sure they were students with guns?
Yes, very likely. Our kids know that other students carry guns.
We need to invest in a gang unit. Seattle likes to think we aren’t a big city but we have big city problems. Put cameras, lots of them, around campus, the intersection of 23rd and Cherry and the surrounding areas. Install metal detectors. Bring in resource officers. We have a problem with teenage boys in gangs. Don’t think for a second there aren’t many people who know the identity of this shooter (and the last shooter and the shooter before that) – the community and the police need to apply pressure and incentive for people to talk. When they find this kid, charge him with murder, no bail and lock him up. Make him an example to all of his friends running around playing with guns.
Invest in youth programs, not more cops
Psychotic and out of touch comment
Can you spare us the same ole same ole until you understand what culture building actually is?
Punish the shooters, replay the footage of the shooting on a loop forever and ever, staff up the gang unit – it doesn’t matter when someone is dead or in the hospital, it’s too late. A mis-interpretation of the constitution is no reason to allow people to be shot every single day and it certainly doesn’t justify doing a million things, piling crap on top of crap to never address the problem of guns in the united states. So many people have been killed by guns being freely available and there is not one single plan to phase them out of society so that americans in the future won’t have to die day in and day out because of a mis-interpretation of the constitution. It’s a bunch of patriarchal bullshit that needs to stop immediately.
Most people in the world would not shoot someone. I use to think the problem was guns…and it is guns, but the problem with car accidents is definitely cars. We would not have a single car accident if cars were removed. It’s different, I know. But there are definite patterns to shootings. Young people more often. Single people or people without family support more often. Emotional people more often. Removing a gun from a would-be shooter will stop the shooter, no doubt. But why so little respect for life? There lies at least part of the problem. Maybe society breeds psychopaths. Maybe the answer is that we don’t have enough space or sense of sovereignty. Sounds like metaphysical b.s….but removing guns doesn’t stop people from wanting to harm others.
A gun can’t drive me to work.. Guns only do one single thing and it’s definitely not protected by the constitution. The entire situation surrounding the proliferation of guns in America is a farce driven by narcissistic male idiots to the detriment of us all and in particular black and brown people. You’re right there’s other things at play here. So why make things a thousand times worse by allowing everyone to have a gun? Obviously.
Like you said-it’s obvious that more guns allow for the opportunity for more people to kill more people with guns. The idea I had when reading your first comment was along the lines of: What would the world be like if we had just as many guns but life was revered and celebrated as this magical set of coincidences that will never repeat and we each won a cosmic lottery. Would anyone want to kill each other? That would also stop gun deaths. So my point was just that you give an opportunity to put a Band-Aid on the problem…and it’s a big, effective band aid for sure…but it doesn’t create an enduring cure to the disease in the way that a better appreciation of this magical life would.
Agree, and would add that lousy/uninvolved parenting is a major cause of the problem.
Enforce gun-free school zones. Metal detectors and clear backpacks – just like in concert and sports venues. Because Garfield serves lunch to every student, there is no reason for students to leave campus through the school day. Close the parking lot (several incidents happened there recently). For those of you finding this too dramatic, our family has three kids at Garfield. They know that some kids are packing heat in school.
Unfortunately I agree with you. From my Garfield student, there is gang activity at the Teen Life Center.
I fear we will be called hysteric and worse (see some of the above comments). But I am so tired that the people in charge offer our kids mental health services and support groups but that no steps are taken to prevent further violence here and now. Yes, youth programs are great and the Teen Life Center was a great initiative…but guns are everywhere and our culture encourages violence. We parents feel so helpless and hopeless…and so do the kids. I cannot believe the district will make them come back to school tomorrow after they saw classmate murdered in broad day light. Who can learn under these conditions?
On the Chicago South Side, where our oldest son grew up, even elementary schools had metal detectors. Shooting were frequent in the neighborhood but not in or at schools. We need to acknowledge the world we live in.
Listen to the father of the victim.
His father, Arron Murphy-Paine, said the city and the school district failed his son.
“I want justice, that is all I got to say,” Murphy-Paine said in a phone call Friday. “Get the justice for everybody that failed my son when I took my son to school and he got killed at lunch.”
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/father-of-teen-killed-outside-garfield-high-school-calls-for-justice/
Was the march actually rescheduled to Monday, or has it already happened? Would like to join if it is on Monday. Peace to Amarr and his family.
Is the violence a mostly gang issue? Is it common knowledge which students are gang-affiliated? The Seattle Times reported that Garfield students’ “social media feeds often show fellow students posing with guns” – wouldn’t it be great if there was a code of conduct that could expel a child for posing on social media with a gun?
Guns are legal.