Around 6:30 this evening, as many as seven individuals assaulted a man in the 1900 block of 13th Avenue South, on the sidewalk near Beacon Hill International School, leaving him unconscious.
Via the Seattle Police Department’s SPDBlotter:
Preliminary investigation indicates that the victim, a male in his 20s, was assaulted and robbed by a group of males who then fled the scene on foot. Responding patrol officers apprehended two suspects and turned them over to Homicide Detectives for further investigation. There are several suspects still at large. SFD Medics responded to the scene and transported the victim to Harborview Medical Center with life-threatening injuries. The two suspects in custody, a 19-year-old male and a 21-year-old male, will be booked into the King County Jail for Investigation of Robbery. Homicide Detectives continue to actively investigate.
Scanner reports from Beacon Hill Neighborhood Watch indicated a witness photographed the assault taking place and identified one of the suspects in custody.
I bet these individuals were probably hanging out in the park and this serves as a reminder to be on the lookout for any suspicious and reckless activity in our neighborhood (drinking in public, aggressive behavior, etc.). It will be interesting to find out if they knew the victim, which is probably pretty likely considering that this assault took place in broad daylight. Hopefully the victim recovers and they’ll be able to identify and arrest more of the suspects.
This was happening half a block away while the 5th grade graduation was going on at the school. A kid came in and told me there was a bloody man on the sidewalk. Nice.
I wonder sometimes if the police really take this area seriously. Just the other day I called 911 on some people who were hanging out a couple blocks from the school, threatening people, clearly up to no good. And no-one ever came. Later that day I saw someone get pulled over for going 5 miles over the speed limit. Great sense of priorities. It’s not really about public safety at all. It’s all about the ticket quota, and generating revenue for mayor Jabba the Nickels. Smooth jazz for all.
The article in Friday’s Times states that the poor guy is in critical condition. I’m sure glad bystanders took photos which will hopefully assist in the apprehension of all of the thugs that perpetrated this heinous crime.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009359098_webrobbery19m.html
Joey – I have often thought the same about the police but I’ve notice the police are much more present in north Beacon and much more responsive. For instance, I called 911 because four individuals were passed out (drunk) on the sidewalk across from Beacon Elementary last week… a fire truck came within 2 minutes! I disagree with the ticket quota comment and my personal comments about safety have been well received by the Mayor’s Office. Let’s give the police some credit for trying to make Beacon a safe neighborhood.
Do we as a community need to be worried about a gang of thugs attacking people in the neighborhood? It would be very helpful if the police could provide more information on this crime. Where these thugs targeting this victim for some reason or was this a random attack?
I heard two men yelling, “Run, hurry up, don’t worry about that.” As they dropped something, I assumed. They ran South from Holgate (in the alley between 14th and 15th ave).
I only saw 2 men shortly following that. Both were in their late teens – early twenties. One appeared to be Latino, 5′ 7″, crew-cut/slicked back hair, with a plain white t-shirt and denim jean shorts. The other was a light skinned African, 5’7″ish, chunky build, red shirt, black pants.
The Latino male returned about 10 minutes later in a grey/silver Audi sedan (Quatro?) He pulled up quickly and didn’t park as if to pick up someone. Then sped off minutes later.
Police called me back saying my description matched men involved.
I just drove by there on the way home and there is a KIRO 7 van at the location.
Katie, you had good luck with the fire truck showing up quickly (maybe they wanted to make sure the passed-out drunks weren’t really dead or something, which is understandable), but the other day there were drunks in Triangle Park, peeing publicly right out there in the park in front of Beacon Avenue, and when we called 911 no one ever did show up. Of course drunks passed out on the grass and peeing in public are not quite as urgent an issue as the guys Joey saw threatening people, but people are not going to feel safe bringing their kids to Triangle Park or walking them down Beacon Avenue under these circumstances. And I do have the nagging feeling that if it was Laurelhurst Park the police reaction might have been different.
Here’s a little more information:
The two men that were arrested are being held on $200,000 and $250,000 bail. One is 19 the other is 20 years old. Neither has been officially charged yet, but prosecutors have until June 23rd to do that.
At last check the man who was beaten was still unconcious and in critical condition at the hospital. Police are still looking for the other attackers (and using the cell phone pics taken by witnesses to help).
Court document show, at least one of the men’s last known addresses was on South Shelton Street also on Beacon Hill.
One more detail, police so far don’t believe the attackers knew the victim (making this random and that much scarier).
First, I have to give a big thanks to J and whoever else reported what they witnessed.
Second, what the heck is up with the area around Beacon Elementary? That area seems to be a magnet for bad stuff going down. My wife visited the school last year and saw a drunk guy pissing on the corner of the building, during school hours, with kids in the playground. OK, whatever! Last weekend, we went to the Beacon Bazaar at the school. We get there and there was a pretty good crowd checking stuff out and eating tamales and such. I’m walking around with my daughter trying to find access to the building’s restroom, which nobody was able to help me with. Anyway, I’m walking around and I noticed a guy passed out ON the sidewalk with a tamale wrapper in his hand literally less than 10 feet from a table selling food (including probably the tamale he had eaten). There were many people, including kids, standing around and not doing a damn thing. I’ve got my 3yo daughter with me so I’m not going to be the one to kick the guy to get up and potentially stir a drunken bee’s nest, so I called 911 and the paramedics showed up quickly to help the guy and shoo him off. I don’t really know how it ended as by then I had snuck into the building so my daughter wouldn’t pee her pants.
So, after a few good tamales we walk up to the playground. Early afternoon on a weekend and it is just us and a group of loud young adults arguing and yelling on the bench by the wading pool. Typical loud young-punk posturing back and forth with the F-this and F-that and so on. It was far enough away from the slides and such that I just focused on playing with my daughter. The worst part was that at least one of these punks was a parent who’s two young children were playing on the equipment and trying to get the attention of a so-called “Mommy†in the group, with no success. We stayed a while. God I felt sorry for those kids, especially the toddler who seemed to have a dazed look in her eyes and was in real need of attention.
Then this! I’m not sure which is worse; a group of thugs randomly attacking the first person they see or a calculated attack on an enemy or rival thug. Not sure it matters, really. I wish I knew what to do. It would be nice to be comfortable about sending my daughter to this school when the time comes. A number of years ago my wife and I were part of an unorganized neighborhood walk group that met at Java Love and just walked and talked. Anyone out there do that now? Anyone want to?
Travis, thanks for the additional info — I didn’t see your comment earlier before I posted our update.
Chris, if you want to appeal to officially start such a group, let us know and we will do a post about it here on the blog.
It would be great to bring a summer’s worth of community documentation on drunkenness, drug sales and crime to our October neighborhood planning meeting. I think we need an alcohol impact area right now and park rangers like Downtown and Capitol Hill have. The Parks Superintendent is up for it. He said this week that only the police guild is standing in the way of getting park rangers in our local parks.
So save your pictures, testimony, etc. We could even bring our current concerns in a presentation to the July 15th opening of the Sound Transit station where City reps will be in high supply. The local drunks will probably be represented too. Maybe an art piece with all the throw-away high octane drink cans? Won’t it be great to wonder if one of these guys is waiting at the station platform when you come down the elevator to a level of 200′ underground where the cell phones might not work?
I also think we should start a fund for the poor Sudanese guy that got beat-up. I pledge $100.
I can not imagine watching a man being beaten and taking photographs. It sounds to me that we as a community are too afraid to speak up when someone is disturbing our children or beating a man. We need to put our fears down to better help our community. WHy didn’t these people say something, yell at the assaulters and chase them off of this poor guy. I am a woman, and a teacher of teens, and these criminal are are just misguided children. We, the adults need to stand up and say what is acceptable behavior in our communities. If people are at the park yelling profanities as my children are playing, you can bet I am going to ask them to stop.
There are many long term remedies for these young “thugs”. Community members need to become mentors, get involved in our middle schools and be good role models. Hiding in our houses, running away from the crime will never stop it. Criminals will know that the good citizens of this neighborhood our too afraid to speak up so crimes will become more brash and occur more frequently in daylight. Call 911 and yell from a safe location to stop! Call a group of bystanders together and ask the “thugs” to stop. Make noise, yell fire and get a group of people to respond with you if you are afraid to do anything on your own. Once we stand of for our rights then we will take back our community.
Elisa, the photographs taken are what allowed the police to find the suspects quickly, and I imagine it will be very useful in convicting them. I don’t know if people were also yelling at the assaulters to get them to stop, or trying to help in other ways, but taking the photos was helpful in its own way and I certainly don’t think the photographer should be chastised for this. It is true that since this happened in broad daylight those nearby should have tried to stop it. I don’t know if they did or not.
RE:
I only saw 2 men shortly following that. Both were in their late teens – early twenties. One appeared to be Latino, 5′ 7″, crew-cut/slicked back hair, with a plain white t-shirt and denim jean shorts. The other was a light skinned African, 5′7″ish, chunky build, red shirt, black pants.
Police called me back saying my description matched men involved.
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A Detective called me to let me know the Latino male I described is one of the men they were able to arrest. They hope to show me a line up for the man in red in efforts to track him (and the others down) also.
I will try to keep the blog updated.
Is there an update on this poor man’s condition? And, as someone else posted, maybe on another blog – is there a fund that has been set up to assist?
…and we want a park up here on the lid without lit fields? A park with tons of brush and shrubs, but no lighting at dusk. Nevermind that’s asking for trouble, or the fact that these kids don’t need quality athletic fields, or athletics for that matter.
Are we surprised? We’ve now been ‘billed’ according to several comments on the various message boards of the Times, the ghetto. Nice. And wait, summer vacation just began and idleness turns into lawlessness. We’ve snubbed any type of positive ‘outlet’ our youth would benefit from, in the form of recreational sports programs (like those organized by CAYA or the Boys and Girls club funded by our pro-sports teams – based on the fact that we need to opt for books over balls) and then when these kids become older and pose a real threat, we wonder why years of having no outlet for agression, no inspiration, incentive or motivation has turned them into monsters. Can this be nipped in the bud? Many kids don’t have good, quality parenting – and no, that’s not our fault, but it is our problem – because we all pay for it in the long run. If that is missing, then kids and teens need physical outlets, role models, incentives, rewards and punishment – not in place of quality parenting, but in addition to. Take away this, and the books or balls argument isn’t valid anyway because they opt for neither.
This combined with the fact that our laws are too lenient (Tubaman) and residents either too passive, or not wanting to address any of this ‘early’, is a disaster in the making.
Good thing though, our kids have other things to busy themselves with if they are not enthralled with the snake habitat – graffiti, random vandalism, robbery and assault.