A Metro bus driver has non-life-threatening injuries after a shooting in downtown Seattle. 3rd Avenue is a mess, and will likely be for some time — use Link or avoid downtown if you can (tunnel buses are running on the surface, per Metro). If you’re in the area, let readers know in the comments what’s happening.

UPDATE: SPD Blotter has more details. Expected traffic impacts per SPD:

UPDATE 2: Metro finally tweeted something at noon, link has SPD update with more details:

UPDATE 3 (1:53pm, Martin): Fifth Avenue Seattle has a pretty good roundup of eyewitness accounts.

UPDATE 4: Seattle Times has a full narrative and background on the shooter.

46 Replies to “Bus-Involved Shooting Outside Benaroya Hall”

  1. 2nd Avenue, University Street, and Seneca Street are also blocked.

    There are two separate shooting scenes being actively investigated right now (I can see both of them from our windows): the bus driver’s shooting at 3rd/Union, and the perp’s shooting by SPD at 2nd/Seneca.

    UPDATE: The downtown scenes are confusing to reporters as well as onlookers. Based on reported facts thus far and on my own view out the windows of my employer’s office (which overlooks both scenes), here is a rough timeline of events:

    – Suspect boards a southbound route 27 coach, #2886, at 3rd and Union (by Benaroya Hall).
    – Suspect begins yelling at the 67-year-old male operator of #2886 (a fare dispute, according to one witness quoted by KOMO).
    – Suspect leaves #2886, but then reboards and shoots the operator multiple times. The operator suffers non-life-threatening injuries.
    – Suspect remains briefly on bus. Police arrive; the suspect leaves the bus, and is chased by police to 2nd and Seneca.
    – A northbound route 120 coach, #2682, is waiting for the traffic light at 2nd and Seneca. The suspect attempts to board, but the operator of #2682 (which is not in a bus zone) won’t allow him to.
    – The operator of #2682 evacuates the coach via the rear door.
    – Police shoot the suspect, causing life-threatening injuries. It is currently unknown what precipitated the shooting, or whether the suspect fired at police. Several bullets pass through coach #2682.

    1. Northbound 120 was caught in the crossfire at 2nd/Seneca where officers shot the suspect. The bus whose driver was shot is a southbound coach on 3rd Avenue. From the type of coach and where it was stopped, it was either a 16 or a 27; unconfirmed tweets say it was a 27.

      2. Not related to the shooting. Relevant if you’re trying to get into downtown in a bus that usually runs in the tunnel.

      4. d*mn.

        The bus tunnel was open at 8:45 because my wife got off the 316 at University Station at that time.

        Her normal pattern is then to walk to Starbucks at Benaroya Hall, but she likes the one on the 2nd Ave side so she was there when the shooting took place.

        If she had gone to the one on 3rd she would have been right there when the shooting occured.

      5. @Izarus

        Bus tunnel was open at least 10 more minutes, since I got off a 216 at University at about 8:55. By the time I made it upstairs at 3rd and Seneca, everything had happened, although there were still a lot of police arriving on scene. Glad I was running extra late this morning, I could just as easily have been on a 218 about 10 minutes earlier.

  4. I love how there hasn’t been so much as a mouse fart on the Metro twitter feed about this.

    2. Everybody knows the AM commute ends at 9 and nobody cares about service disruptions after that.

    3. When it comes to communicating with customers during a major disruption, Metro tends to suck – hard. I don’t know where the breakdown is, but they seem to place little-to-no importance on communicating with passengers.

      To wit: I was on Link this morning, and was affected by the signaling issues in the tunnel. The problems started when we held at SODO station for a good 5-10 minutes, with no communication from the driver (other than the ‘traffic ahead’ PSA) as to why was happening. We then proceeded to the block between Hogate and Stadium, where we stopped again for a few minutes. Eventually, we pulled in to Stadium station, where the driver played the ‘service delay’ PSA, shut the doors, and pulled us into the IDS holding area…where we waited for another 5 minutes.

      In total, I was delayed on Link for 20 minutes (I got off at IDS, early), and never heard any communication from the driver as to what the cause of the delays were, how severe they were, what alternate routes to take, or even that busses were not serving the DSTT. Nothing.

      This “I don’t care” attitude regarding customer communication extends all over the place: not checking schedule translations, not posting clear or accurate stop closure announcements, not providing advanced noticed of major track work on Link, even failing to provide schedules at all. For all the hard work they do to get and keep vehicles on the road, it would seem they’ve forgotten the primary reason those vehicles are there in the first place.

      I’m editorializing, at this point, which isn’t terribly helpful. Suffice to say, today is a great example of some of the big ways our transit agencies are succeading and failing at the same time.

      1. Jesus a man was shot for crying out loud. Bitching about service disruptions and communication?

      2. I actually agree with you that Will’s timing is inappropriate, but the point he’s making is not incorrect.

        When major service interruptions occur, be they foreseeable (a major civic event; a snowstorm) or unforeseeable (a crisis like yesterday’s), our transit agencies have fairly elaborate protocols in place to figure out reroutes in order to keep the minimum prescribed number of vehicles rolling and haphazardly headed to… somewhere.

        But Will puts it perfectly when he says,

        For all the hard work they do to get and keep vehicles on the road, it would seem they’ve forgotten the primary reason those vehicles are there in the first place.

        The agencies confuse the means (vehicles existing, going places) with the ends (getting actual human beings to their destinations). Thanks to compounding failures of vision, logic, and communication, this happens. And this happens (germane corollary here). Complicated reroutes appear suddenly and last for hours or days, with no good way to know about them unless you’re already signed up for that particular route’s mailing list. And instead of a real plan to provide worthwhile trunk service in inclement weather, you get a comical amount of this.

        An transit system that appears consistently ambivalent, in good times or bad, to making your trip work — or even to trying to inform you when things go awry — is an system that you’ll stop trusting with your time or money.

      3. Most of the time, the operator has no clue what’s going on. He’ll be driving along, and then the radio will squawk, “Please operate the following reroute…” No further explanation, no nothing. When something unusual happens, I’m reduced to mumbling “I wish I knew,” to repeated questions and complaints.

        Most days, I’m lucky to see a write-up in the paper about it the next day.

        This has always been the traditional “Ours not to wonder why” approach to communication with operators. And maybe there’s sense to it. Don’t overload the operators with facts, just get them driving around the problem soonest.

        But Metro seems to forget that operators are the first line of information for passengers, especially those who are already on the bus. It might not be mine to wonder why, but that tax-paying citizen-customer in the seat behind me is entitled to an explanation.

    1. Better to have folks prepared for a long investigatory siege… not to mention the tunnel buses running on the surface, wouldn’t you agree Kevin?

      1. To closures in a three block radius in the middle of a major city for eight hours? I wouldn’t agree. Sounds like overkill.

      2. Sounds like a good reason for additional infrastructure – another rail line underground, perhaps!

    2. The 2 shooting sites are crime scenes and require a thorough investigation and with the gunman dying the police must document every thing at both locations which does take a long time.

    1. In Chicago and NYC, bus drivers are told not to dispute fares if they value their lives.

      1. Policy here is not to get involved with fare disputes. But, then again, some later reports seem to imply that there was not even a fare “dispute,” just a fare reminder. We’ll see what comes out of the investigation.

  8. Yikes. That explains my mess of a commute this morning. I hope the driver pulls through and has a speedy recovery.

    I did get an email notice from Metro about an hour ago that normal tunnel operations had resumed.

  11. Pingback: From the Archives: Bus Violence

  12. Bus driving in big American cities is dangerous work. You never know if any kind of challenge or delay or other problem is going to set some kook off. And there’s more of a chance of being kooks because it’s mostly poor people who ride public transit, and poor people usually have issues with behavior, drugs, alcohol, criminality, and just not living right.

    [ot]

    1. One would expect to hear about more crime on buses in large cities because there are more buses and riders, and therefore more incidents. But I wonder if it’s true that buses are any less safe in large* cities – that would be incidents per rider or driver, rather than total number overall.

      * Does Seattle even qualify as a large city? I’d consider us medium.

      1. One doesn’t hear about it if they’re in some ivory tower where they drive their SUV everywhere, and the news doesn’t cover it unless it seems incredibly egregious (e.g. no one hears about assaults on buses unless someone is part of a special group like that blind lady on the 7, or if a driver becomes seriously injured or killed). One doesn’t know unless they ride the bus a lot, and see all the crazies aboard that disturb the peace and harm others.

        Then again, I see your name, and realize you don’t deal in empiricism.

      2. Even “see all the crazies” has something approaching a normal distribution curve, which means a packed bus in a small town* should have around the same number. Sure, they look different than our “crazies”, due to cultural differences, but the small town I grew up in had our share.

        *of course filling up a bus in a small town is difficult to do

      3. My experience with smaller transit systems is that operators are more likely to confront problem passengers, sometimes even pretty vigorously, probably because incidents are rarer and the agencies don’t provide the same level of training in security issues.

        In late ’90s, I recall being the only passenger on an after-dark Route 24 trip with a longtime and popular Kitsap Transit driver (who I’m sure is retired — he’d have to be in his late 70s or early 80s now). He stopped to let on someone near the Westpark housing projects who said he didn’t have fare. The driver’s response was something to the effect of “Not anything? I can even break a $50 if you need me to.” He even got his wallet out of his back pocket. Needless to say, I was floored by how nonchalant this driver was in a fairly rough part of Bremerton.

        And I remember very well that anyone who stiffed “Whitey” (this was back when they had nameplates that said “Your Operator is _____”) was asking for a confrontation.

  13. I understand the need to do a thorough job of investigating the scene, and I’m usually a patient person, but having 2nd closed during rush hour is complete BS. They’ve had over six hours now to do the investigation. Been sitting on the bus on 2nd for 30 minutes and we’ve moved a total of 2 blocks.

    1. You must be experiencing the “minor delays” ST referred to in its 4:48pm alert email. From the tone of the message, there’s nothing to worry about and riders will be home shortly.

  14. Shocked by the comments here about how the road closure for a shooting investigation is overkill. Sounds like a pretty good reason for the roads to be closed, this needs to be investigated properly and thoroughly.

    1. “Shocked” might be overkill, but yeah, definitely disappointed. So sorry investigating a sprawling crime scene—one involving a fatality and an officer-involved shooting, nonetheless—inconvenienced your evening commute.

    2. I used “overkill” related to their initial note that they were closing down a three block radius – it doesn’t appear that they actually did it but if that had that would have meant everything from 5th to the Waterfront and Marion to Pike which would have indeed been overkill. A better alert from SPD would have mentioned specific blocks that were closed for the investigation.

  15. I have to say, I don’t frequently read this blog, but many of the comments here are incredibly selfish in nature. It must be truly nice to be able to do your jobs without being threatened in any way shape or form that you can sit here and make some of these incredibly asinine comments about Metro not communicating quickly enough or SPD needing to shut down a chunk of downtown for two shooting investigations and nary a word about a public servant who was shot doing his job. The operator who was shot doesn’t get into fare disputes. He is the best of all of us; one of the most compassionate, gentle people I’ve had the privilege to meet and to work with.

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