News Update: Shooting at Jewish Federation in Belltown
Federal and city officials—Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, FBI agent Laura Laughlin, and SPD Assistant Chief Nick Metz—held a press conference about the fatal shooting at (roughly) 8 pm this evening. The quartet was greeted by roughly a dozen impatient reporters. “It’s been a hell of a long day,” one reporter said. “I was covering Critical Mass and then got called down [to Belltown].”
“It’s a sad day,” began Mayor Nickels. “This is a crime of hate and there is no place for that in the city of Seattle.” Nickels and Police Chief Kerlikowske said the city was “taking steps to protect synagogues, temples, and mosques” to prevent any “retaliatory incidents. Everything we have now says this is an isolated incident.”
“Mosques,” one reporter asked. “Can we infer from this that the suspect was Muslim?”
“You could infer that,” Kerlikowske responded.
Kerlikowske said the suspect walked through the front entrance of the Jewish Federation with a large-caliber semi-automatic handgun, asked to see a manager, and began firing. Four of the wounded have been identified: Cheryl Stumbo, Layla Bush, Carol Goldman, and Dayna Klein, a pregnant woman who is in satisfactory condition with a gunshot wound in her arm. The name of the deceased has not yet been released by the medical examiner’s office.
At 4:03 pm, the police were called, informed of the shots and that the suspect might be holding a hostage. At 4:05 the suspect spoke to officers on 911. (Reports are mixed—either the suspect or the victims initiated the call, but the gunman eventually ended up on the phone with police.) By 4:15, the suspect had given himself up, with no injury to himself or police.
The suspect, according to FBI agent Laura Laughlin, is male, between 30 and 40 years old and a U.S. citizen, not from Seattle. (KING 5 reports the suspect is Naveed Haq, a 30-year-old Pakistani man with a criminal background. According to KING 5, Haq is from the Pasco area and is a U.S. citizen, but it was not immediately known how long he has lived in the United States. Also unknown is what sort of criminal record he has. Officials are on the way to the Pasco to interview his family. The Seattle Times reports that a man got through security at the Jewish Federation and told staff members, “I’m a Muslim American; I’m angry at Israel,” then began shooting, according to Amy Wasser-Simpson, the vice president for planning and community services for the Jewish Federation.)
Laughlin said the shooting would be investigated as a hate crime. “You said all the victims were women,” a reporter asked Kerlikowski. “Is there any indication that the suspect was targeting women?”
Kerlikowske shook his head: “I think the majority of people inside were women.”
“Was there any warning or indication to the SPD that an incident like this would occur?” I asked, clicking on a rumor I heard from another reporter.
“There have been protests on both side of this issue, but nothing to indicate a crime of this magnitude would happen,” Kerlikowske said.
“Which issue? The Lebanon-Israel conflict?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any indication the suspect was inspired by the conflict in Lebanon?”
“I’m not going to address that.”
Assistant Chief Metz said the SPD had received a security alert the day before the shootings, indicating that security at synagogues should be buttressed.
“That was a general alert sent out by the FBI,” he said. “It was not specific to this kind of threat.”
what does nickels mean by "this is a crime of hate and there is no place for that in the city of seattle"? i know what he means to mean, but there was a place for it. the place to kill jews was the jewish federation. it's real. it really happened. and i hate feel good moral platitudes dueling with reality. what he should say is "seattle is full of hate [or pasco is full of hate] and what are we going to do about it?!"