Tagged: Seattle shooting

Police have released 911 tapes from a shooting spree that left five people dead in Seattle, including one from a man who phoned authorities from inside the bathroom of a cafe where a gunman opened fire.

“I just threw the frigging stool at him, legs first. My brother died in the World Trade Center. I promised myself,” if something like this ever happened, “I would never hide under a table.”

Four people were slain when Ian Lee Stawicki started shooting Wednesday morning inside Cafe Racer.

At a news conference Thursday, police said a man sitting next to Stawicki was a "hero" because he threw stools at the gunman when he stood up and opened fire. Several people were able to flee the cafe during this time.

In this first person piece, Ed Skoog, a Northwest poet and musician and a regular at the Café Racer, shares his impressions of the local arts and music hangout before the shooting on Wednesday that killed four and wounded another.

Skoog said Drew Keriakedes and Joe "Vito" Albanese, two of the victims, were well known at the café and that Drew especially was a raconteur character who was “always on,” always ready with a dirty joke and a gritty blues song from the ’20s and ’30s, with plenty of songs he’d created himself.

“He was a magnetic performer,” Skoog said of Drew.

Skoog said he’d seen the man identified as the shooter around the bar from time to time, hanging out in the alley “a little out of sight.”

“He was a freaky dude, but normal looking enough to pass,” Skoog said.

Here’s Skoog writing about the Café Racer and its vibe:

The only survivor of a shooting at a Seattle cafe where four other people were killed is expected to recover.

Harborview Medical Center reports Leonard Meuse has been upgraded from critical to serious condition. Spokeswoman Susan Gregg says he remains in the intensive care unit Thursday.

The two morning shootings in Seattle – leaving four dead and one wounded from the Cafe Racer Espresso on Roosevelt Way near the U-District and one dead on First Hill during a carjacking – were apparently committed by the same suspect, said Seattle Police Department Assistant Chief James Pugel.

The suspect shot himself in West Seattle later in the afternoon as police approached him, Pugel said. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center. The hospital reported Wednesday night that he was dead. A fourth victim at the Cafe Racer shooting also died Wednesday night, according to Harborview Medical Center spokeswoman Susan Greg.

One man wounded in the cafe shooting remained at Harborview. He was in critical but stable condition following surgery earlier in the day

Seattle homicide detectives on Sunday afternoon fatally shot a man who was a suspect in the stabbing death of an 84-year-old employee at a self-storage facility in the city's Interbay neighborhood. The suspect had been using the victim's credit cards.

Detectives used photos to track him down in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, at the bustling corner of 4th Avenue and Cedar Street. Seattle Police spokesman Mark Jamieson told KPLU the murder suspect attacked detectives, forcing them to fire their weapons.