Raincharm’s Weblog

Let’s start out with a picture of the flower, taken at the end of quite a day.

May 30th version

When you look at our individual days, we did not do anything extraordinary.
But there were extraordinary, awful events occurring around us, or more specifically around our house.

A man walked into a cafe, Cafe Racer, a short distance from our house.
He shot 5 people in the cafe. 2 died there, and a third at the hospital. (The other 2 are in critical condition.)

Carl was at home, and called me when he heard the helicopter overhead. And police cars swarming the area.
He turned on the TV and saw the breaking news. (Except when the helicopter disrupted our over-the-air reception)
They told everyone that was in the vicinity to lock their doors and stay inside.

And that is what he did.

They were conducting a door-to-door, street-to-street search for the gunman.
Carl described 4-5 policemen walking down the street with their guns drawn, pointing into the bushes, etc.
Then 2 more running up from behind, and charging down the street.
Then 2 police cars tearing down the street, with one more following slowly.

Rather un-nerving, to say the least.

Then the news broke of a second shooting downtown, an apparent car-jacking.
A woman shot (and killed), her car gone.

The car was found in West Seattle about an hour later (maybe), with a gun on the seat.

And a few hours later police spotted the man from the Cafe Racer shootings, in West Seattle.
Cafe Racer had a really good video camera system, so police had pictures to go from.
When they approached him, he shot himself in the head. (First reported to have died, he apparently is still alive, but maybe not.)

The CNN Version. The KIRO Version.

By the time I left work, the police had tied all of the incidents together. The street around the Cafe Racer sight were still blocked, but with the killer in the hospital/custody, things were starting to return to normal.

This is a horrible story, and really impacted the entire city. Three widely spaced crime scenes. Neighborhoods essentially held hostage. Schools in lockdown.

At least a few of those lost at Cafe Racer were musicians that performed in that venue, and elsewhere around the city.

What a waste.

This entry was posted on May 30, 2012 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.