2 killed, 1 injured after shooting at Seattle skateboarding event in former CHAZ site Cal Anderson Park

Despite lifesaving efforts by officers and medics, one man was pronounced dead at the scene. Medics transported the two other victims to Harborview Medical Center where one man later died. The other remains in critical condition.

Police are looking for a fourth man who was involved but left the scene before officers arrived.

A skateboarder named Kai told KOMO News, “I saw two people hit the ground, get shot completely dead. I was over here skateboarding. There was a huge skateboard event happening. I look to my left and I see, ‘Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!’ And we all hit the ground and we all laid down.”

According to another witness, there were 40 people at the skate park at the time of the shooting. Cal Anderson Park is the site of the 2020 deadly "autonomous zone."

This was the second deadly shooting in April and the month had already marked a multi-year high of shootings in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

A lifelong resident of Capitol Hill and chair of the Seattle Police Department African American Community Advisory Council Victoria Beach told KOMO News that she traces the increase in violence back to the 2020 riots when six square blocks of the neighborhood were abandoned by city officials, turned over to Antifa and BLM rioters and became the deadly Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).

Six people were shot in the autonomous zone and two of them were killed, both were black teens. According to the SPD at the time, rapes, robberies, and murders spiked 250 percent. Earlier this year, Seattle settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit with business owners who claimed CHAZ violated their constitutional rights and caused damage to their property. Families of the victims have also been successful in suing the city.

Beach told the outlet that she believes that some criminals– even almost three years later– still view the neighborhood as a lawless area where crime is tolerated or ignored. “It’s a huge heartache. I think about my parents, my grandparents, their minds would be blown over this."

A manager with the security company Iron and Oak told KOMO they have 55 security officers in the neighborhood at any given time to protect approximately 20 businesses and that they provided surveillance video to the police that captured the entire incident.

Seattle's violent crime rate reached a 15-year high in 2022, surpassing the record set in 2021. According to a yearly crime report released by the Seattle Police Department, violent crime increased by 4 percent compared to 2021, which was the previous all-time high in reported crimes.

One of the contributing factors is over 600 officers have left the department since the city council defunded the police in response to the riots in 2020. The lack of officers has been so devastating that cases that are supposed to be handled by the Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Unit are not getting assigned because of staffing shortages. 911 response times have also increased dramatically.

Additionally, the spike in crime has been blamed on the Democratic-controlled Washington State Legislature passing laws in 2021 restricting how law enforcement responds to an incident, including a change that affects how officers pursue after a suspect who is fleeing in a vehicle.

The problem is magnified by the revolving-door justice system in Seattle and King County that releases prolific offenders with dozens of felony convictions.