Investigators are searching for more than one suspect in a shooting Wednesday night that left one person dead and another seven wounded outside a McDonald’s in downtown Seattle.
Police said multiple people opened fire in the busiest part of the downtown area, just blocks from the city’s popular Pike Place Market, during the height of the evening commute.
Credit: Los Angeles Times
Credit: Los Angeles Times
Homicide and gang units were investigating, police said, but so far no arrests have been made.
Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best said during a news conference that the gunfire began after a dispute in front of the McDonald’s.
Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins said authorities began receiving calls of multiple gunshot victims at about 5 p.m. One person was found dead and five others were taken to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center by fire and medical personnel, he said.
Victim not yet named
The person who died was a woman about 40 to 50 years old, fire officials told the Seattle Times. Her name has not been given.
Hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg and fire officials said later Wednesday that seven people were being treated at a hospital for gunshot wounds. An approximately 55-year-old woman was in critical condition, a 9-year-old child was in serious condition and five men were in satisfactory condition.
Forty-year-old Samantha Cook said she was refilling her transit card in a nearby station when she heard gunfire. “I was on the first set of escalators,” Cook told the newspaper. “There were a lot of gunshots that started going off — maybe 10 or 11. It was just rapid fire.”
Tyler Parsons told the Times he was working near the scene when he saw people drop to the ground. People took cover behind the register where he worked. “Terrifying it’s so close,” he said.
Some eyewitness at the scene took video as emergency officials arrived.
Third shooting in 2 days
It's the third downtown Seattle shooting in two days. Police found a man with a gunshot wound in a mall stairwell Tuesday, and he later died at a hospital. Police shot a person in another area of downtown Seattle earlier Wednesday.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement that he was “horrified and dismayed to hear about the shooting in Seattle tonight. We grieve for the one individual confirmed dead in the shooting, and wish a full and speedy recovery to those who were injured.”
— ArLuther Lee of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this report.
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