One man was killed and a 14-year-old boy was wounded in a shooting early Monday in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, or CHOP, a patch of the city occupied by demonstrators rallying against police brutality and racism🧜, according to reports.
One victim was rꦓushed to Harborview Medical Center in a private car shortly after 3 a.m. while the second was taken via ambulan🌠ce a few minutes later, hospital spokesperson Susan Gregg .
“When investigators arrived, they found a white Jeep Cherokee riddled with bullet holes on 12th Avenue between Pike and Pine,” Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best told reporters.
“Officers were told two men in the vehicle had been shot, but both were gone when officers got there.”
It appeared the crime scene was tampered with fﷺollowing the shooting, Best said.
“Our homicide detectives searched the Jeep for evidence but there wasn’t much we could find,” Best said. “The typical things we search for in a shooting like this weren’t there.”
“It’s abundantly clear to our detectives that people had been in and out of the car after the shooting.”
Detectives are relying on witnesses to figure out what happened, but Best said that, as with the other shootings in the area, “people are not being cooperative with our requests for help.”
the “Seattle Loot🐭ers, Agitators, Anarchists and ‘Protestors’” on Twitter on Monday, sayin♎g they “are now refusing to leave the ‘CHOP’ Zone.”
He : “They have ZERO respect for Government, or the Mayor of Seattle or Governor of Wa🍌shington State! Not good!”
The gunfire that erupted Monday near 12th Avenue and Pike Street marked the fourth shooting in the area where the Seattle police’s East Precinct was headquartered.
Police haven’t provided any further details about what led to the shooting and have not mentioned any suspects.
Protesters calling for racial justice and an end to police brutality have occupied several blocks around the police station — which cops abandoned — and Cal Anderson Park for about two weeks.
“I’m aware of three shootings and one murder that was a result of a shooting in the zone,” Police Chief Carmen Best told CNN on Sunday before the latest shooting occurred.
“We’ve also had some assaults, sexual assaults, a robbery, and a couple of arsons. So the level of violence that is starting in that area certainly increased over time and it is no longer a block party. It’s a real public safety issue,” she added.
On June 20, a 19-year-old demonstrator was fatally shot in the zone near Cal Anderson Park.
Trump last week threatened to intervene if authorities did not crack down on the pro♈testers.
“They don’t do something with Seattle, we’re going to do that. We’re going to go in there,” the president told Fox News host Sean Hannity in a town hall. “What is happening, they’re taking over American ♐cities. In all cases, its Democrats. They’re Democrat-run, in all cases.”
City officials said barriers at CHOP would ⛎be dismantled Sunday, but they remained there as of Monday mor♏ning, .