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Sunday, May 21, 2006

Stabbing on East Pike

Posted by on May 21 at 23:09 PM

One of the shopkeepers at Benson Grocery (320 E Pike St at Bellevue Ave) was stabbed in the stomach at 7 pm tonight. Medic One took him away. For several years I’ve appreciated how this man keeps his eye on the street as he sweeps the sidewalk in front of his store every night. No word yet on a suspect, motive, or the victim’s condition.
UPDATE: I stopped in Monday morning and spoke to the corner-store’s owner, Mr. Suk Kang. According to Kang, who wasn’t present at the time of the assault but spoke to the victim at the hospital early this morning, a man walked into the store yesterday evening, immediately turned the corner into the small space behind the counter, and stabbed the cashier, Mr. Soon K. Park, in the stomach several times without saying a word. Park grabbed the suspect’s hands and pushed him backward toward the front door, and then the man fled on foot. A second employee was in the back of the store at the time and saw the end of the struggle. Park was able to describe his attacker, a 5-foot-6-inch black man in his early 20s, to police. Nothing was stolen and no motive is known.

Suk Kang, who’s owned the convenience store for 24 years, says this is the first assault on an employee in the store’s history. He also told me that he expected Park to be released from the hospital later today.


CommentsRSS icon

Please give more info when you get it... i live around the corner. thanks!

I once walked into his shop and caught him practicing his golf swing when nobody was around. I kind of surprised him and I think he was a little embarrassed. We looked at each other and just started laughing. This is one of my fondest memories of Seattle. I hope he's okay.

I went to high school on Pike and Summit and spent most of the time @ Bensons Grocery. The people that run that store are nothing short of fascinating, working there must be like ER with canned fruit.

Bill
Vancouver B.C.

Why describe the assailant as a "black" man? Is race even important in this situation? Isn't it possible that the shopkeeper in the confusion of the situation could mistake the race of the attacker? Ask ten witnesses to a car wreck and you'll get ten different versions of what happened. No one has proof of the race of the assailant. Blacks are too often blamed for crime simply because of racism.

RW: Nice trolling, dumbass. The assailiant's black skin IS a defining feature. In a city where 75% of the populace is white, you need to note that.

Only one witness claims the assailant is "black". By repeating the claim of the likely racist witness, the press then perpetuates the idea that crimes are more often committed by young black males. Why not leave race out of it and allow other witnesses to step forward who possibly saw a white man in the area? Why believe only witnesses who claim to see "black" criminals?


If you want to read racist news coverage go to the Seattle Weakly.

POSTED: PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS. THANK YOU.

I'm afraid racial watch does have a point. There is had been no proof offered of the assailant's race. Seattle is a notoriously racist town. Unless you can prove the race of the person who did this, it's dangerous and misleading to base everything on what one witness claims. A white guy could easily have done this and no one would suspect him because of the racist coverage in the media.

Sorry for the troll-baiting, but this is a fucking stupid insinuation. There were at least two witnesses and their descriptions of the assailant match. Why would any victim mislead the police who were about to search the neighborhood for their attacker?

Why would any victim mislead the police who were about to search the neighborhood for their attacker?

Your ignorance of the racism in the American legal system is breathtaking. Who can count the number of cases where entire white communities pointed the finger at a black man after violence had occured. After the black man was convicted and served time, sometimes decades later we learn that none of the scores of white witnesses was telling the truth, and only blamed the black man because their neighbors did the same.


Unless you personally have proof of the race of the assailant, you must be very careful to say "witnesses claim, allege, feel, that a black man is responsible".
To accept their claims as fact is racist. You could find thirty white people today that claim to have seen Elvis - that's one thing, but one white person with physical proof that they've seen Elvis is quite another.

scenario staight out of a Spike Lee movie 'Do the Right Thing'(1989)

MOOKIE
Dago, wop, garlic-breath, guinea,
pizza-slinging, spaghetti-bending,
Vic Damone PerryComo,Luciano Pavarotti, Sole Mio, nonsinging motherfucker.

PINO
You gold-teeth, gold-chain-wearing,fried-chicken-and-biscuit-eatin',monkey, ape, baboon, big thigh,fast-running, three-hundred-sixty-degree-basketball-dunking spade
Moulan Yan.

STEVIE
You slant-eyed, me-no-speak-American, own every fruit and vegetable stand in New York,Reverend Moon, Summer Olympics '88,Korean kick-boxing bastard.

OFFICER LONG
Goya bean-eating, fifteen in a car,
thirty in an apartment, pointed
shoes, red-wearing, Menudo, meda-
meda Puerto Rican cocksucker.

KOREAN CLERK
It's cheap, I got a good price for
you, Mayor Koch, "How I'm doing,"
chocolate-egg-cream-drinking, bagel
and lox, B'nai B'rith asshole.

MISTER SEÑOR LOVE DADDY(Samuel L. Jackson,the man)
Yo! Hold up! Time out! Time out!
Y'all take a chill. Ya need to
cool that shit out... and that's
the truth, Ruth.

And that last line is what this city of Seattle needs to listen to- so chill the fuck out.

"It fell off a truck"

and the ever reliable

"two black guys did it"

"By repeating the claim of the likely racist witness"
"Seattle is a notoriously racist town"
hmmm... Seattle can be a sexist town too so why even mention it was a male suspect? maybe it was a butch looking woman. I've been threatened 3 times on Capital Hill and all 3 times the person was of African desent. Out of the two dozen or so fights I have seen
on the Hill a vastly disproportionate number were African American young men. By screaming racism when an assailant is African American you are victumizing the REAL victim (and witnessess) twice.

Just because you claim to witness more black violence on Capitol Hill does not mean there is in fact more black violence.

Lots of white people are afraid to even encounter a group of black men walking down the street at night. Why? Racism.


You see what you want to see, and you want to see blacks as committing more crimes so that's what you see.

The "allegations" that the stabber was male only perpetuate the stereotype that men are more violent than women. And if you need evidence that we live in an anti-male society, just take a look at our jails where men outnumber women by more than 100 to 1.

Unless the stabber was a woman, these sexist charges should be dropped immediately.

"You see what you want to see, and you want to see blacks as committing more crimes so that's what you see."

Ok, then you want to see black crime as a racist myth, so that's what you see. Or, do you believe you have privileged access to The Truth?

"Lots of white people are afraid to even encounter a group of black men walking down the street at night. Why? Racism."

Is that so? You should get out of Greenlake sometime and visit 23rd and Cherry, 22nd and Madison, or 19th and Spruce where you can chat it up with the nice young men that hang out there. Such a friendly and enlightened bunch of guys, you'll have lots in common.

Hello? According to the Slog post, the victim identified the assailant as black. Are we supposed to believe that the victim is so racist that he doesn't want the police to find the guy who actually stabbed him?

None of you fuckers are even aware of the blatant sizist implications of this report. "5-foot-6-inch"!?! What the fuck? As a man-of-reduced-stature I'm sick of our society's need to constantly demonize short people. C'mon people, we're bigger than this.

I'm surprised Paulus was the first to point this out -- I'm a 5'6" white woman and I resent the implicit sizeism by this "victim" and "witness". They obviously have anti-5'6"ism.

Seriously, I used to shop there, it's a friendly store, I hope he'll be ok.

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