Comments

1
holy mother of christ, marti! i praise the jesus you are okay. oh my freaking god.
2
I am shaken up but I'm fine. I'm really really worried about the bouncer who was shot, the rumor is he was shot in the leg and is in stable condition but it is unclear if his leg's bullet wound will have any lasting health effects.
3
So, would it be jumping to unreasonable conclusions to assume, based on this report, that the female victim picked the guy up in the Exit, went home with him, set him up to get robbed, and then tried to play it off? That he tracked her down in the last place he'd seen her and went postal?

Man. What a mess.
4
I'm so sorry this happened, and very glad you came out physically unharmed. Appreciate you writing about it for us.
5
Holy shit! I'm glad you made it out ok. What a terrifying event.

@3 unreasonable. The police interview(further down Slog) mentions that they had a baby together. He said something about having hurt her baby. The Police forced their way into the home and made sure the child was OK.
6
Getting popped in the leg can have pretty drastic effects on quality of life :-/

I hope everyone turns out okay.
7
@3, YES, that's an unreasonable conclusion to jump to! Jesus Christ.
8
Thank you for posting this. The Twilight has been my local bar since its first iteration on Madison waaay back in the day. Makes my head and heart heart to be able to picture this so clearly. Glad everyone is mostly ok. And another sad day for our neighborhood.
9
@3 Why should we trust what the shooter said? Why not give the victim the benefit of the doubt here? Sure, she COULD be an asshole, but I don't see what's productive about contemplating that less than 24 hours after she's been terribly injured.
10
Damn girl! You were very brave. I hope some one is taking care of you. Big Internet hugs to you.
11
If everyone in the packed bar had been carrying, this would have ended MUCH better.
12
You could well have PTSD from this. Good luck to you.
13
Jesus.
15
this really points to the danger of ushaped bars with no rear exit. they should be banned.

kidding aside, pretty awesome to get out of there, thoughts are with the victims and with the bar. i love that space and hope folks will head back when it opens for solidarity.
16
Not to sound preachy, but lets remember and thank the cops that were there in minutes and took down this guy before he shot more people and maybe took life. Seattle PD gets a bad rap alot, some deserved, but they are professionals and I'd hate to think of life without them.
17
@14: If you ever got out from under your bridge, you might enjoy going to a bar. You might even pick up a billy-goat!
18
Very glad you made it out safely.
19
@12 is actually correct.
20
Must have been some TV, to be worth all this.

Thanks for the reporting. I hope you all recover quickly.
21
Glad you're OK. That's awful
22
@14- have you ever been to the fucking twilight you fucking idiot? Fuck you for taking a first-hand story about a shooting at a local neighborhood bar and turning it into a "wahh I hate hipsters". Fucking trolls. Seriously, you are the worst.
23
#22, is that really your picture, or are you a blow-up doll?
24
Marti, I am SO GLAD you are okay. This whole thing is just too awful. I'm so shaken and I just want to hug everyone.
25
Greg (the bouncer) is going to be okay. Here's an update from one of my friends on Facebook:

Ok lovelies. Greg is in stable condition and is in the ICU at Harborview. He was shot in the groin and the wound severed his femoral artery. They fixed him up but he'll have to do another surgery in a few days. I'll find out about visitors from Kyle and his family. So thankful that he's alive and the asshole who did this isn't!

Update #2! Just saw Greg!!! He's in great spirits. He's sleepy and on a lot of Morphine! They have asked for no visitors or phone calls until he's out of the ICU. Just family. I will update via FB frequently.
26
glad to hear your ok Marti, that was Stevo who handed you the phone .crazy fucking-insane night
27
Greg (the bouncer) is going to be okay. Here's an update from one of my friends on Facebook:

Ok lovelies. Greg is in stable condition and is in the ICU at Harborview. He was shot in the groin and the wound severed his femoral artery. They fixed him up but he'll have to do another surgery in a few days. I'll find out about visitors from Kyle and his family. So thankful that he's alive and the asshole who did this isn't!

Update #2! Just saw Greg!!! He's in great spirits. He's sleepy and on a lot of Morphine! They have asked for no visitors or phone calls until he's out of the ICU. Just family. I will update via FB frequently.

28
I witnessed a murder once. It was back in 2004 at the Shell station on Denny and Aurora. It's awful to go through and I wasn't as close to the shooting as you were. After 9 years, it's a memory; haunting, but not in my thoughts very often. I hope you recover well from the horrifying experience. I got counseling, and it helped.
30
Glad to hear Greg the Bouncer is (mostly) ok. Glad you are alive too, Marti. Condolences to all. We'll have to go to the Twilight after it re-opens and donate to whatever medical fund they set up for Greg there.
31
I recently got an update on the condition of the bouncer, who is a friend: He is doing well after coming out of surgery early this morning, but is still in the ICU for probably another day or two. He is resting and has family and loved ones holding his hand.
He's one of the nicest guys I've met in Seattle, and definitely the sweetest door guy in town. Think good things at him, would you?
I don't have any info on the other victim. Does anyone know how she's doing?
32
Marti, I've very sorry that you had to go through that, but I'm glad you're okay.
33
Thanks for the update on Greg - it's much appreciated!

Anyone hear anything on the other victim/mom yet?
34
@16 is right. Thanks, SPD officers! You did a good job.
36
@16-- Agreed. And I think it's also a good time (with the Greg updates) to be thankful for the people at Harborview and for the fact that we have one of the premier trauma centers in the country.
37
I know just from the Twilight, it being my second home, and he's one of the nicest dudes I know. I can't wait to get to the Twi, hoist 2 or 8 and donate what I can.
39
As others have said: so sorry you had to experience this; major kudos for seeing the opportunity to get out of there; and know that you can be "ok" and still be pretty messed up by something like this.
40
I'm not sure how a nightclub shooting is even possible. You know... because guns are banned in nightclubs.
41
#23 - the picture in question is Calista Gingrich, Newt's wife. Current wife.
42
@25- Thanks for the update. that's really scary. Femoral artery damage is fatal really quick. Just goes to show that every first responder who needed to show up in that emergency did, and did so very quickly. 23rd and Cherry is a fucked up area and I've personally witnessed a drive-by there. Hopefully that area will stop with the mindless violence. More gun buybacks please. Is there a way to send support to the bouncer? I'm sure plenty of us have graced his door and want to send thanks and condolences.
43
@40: It's because they allow members of a well-regulated militia inside. We can fix that.
44
If a fund to help Greg comes into being, and they want to give us an address for those of us who aren't regulars at The Twilight but are willing to help, please let us know.
45
That's weird....post #23 was Mister G, to whom I replied. But after I posted, it changed to unregistered commenter. Hm.
46
@40 do you think that guns SHOULD NOT be banned in nightclubs? the shooter had to go back to his car or his recently-robbed apartment to fetch it. he had to shoot his way in to the club, too.

oh, wait, you're just being sarcastic.
47
@40 - every time you hear of a drunk driving fatality, do you say to yourself "I don't know how this is even possible, since drunk driving is illegal?". Laws don't eliminate crime.

How about gun nuts like you get some fucking taste and quit with the sardonic irony and express some fucking concern for the side effects of your favorite hobby to talk about.
48
@42 Greg's friend Steve-O is trained in CPR/First Aid and very likely saved Greg's life. He was the one who handed Marti the phone and was tending to him before the responders got there. Big kudos to Steve-O.
49
@16 - Good point. Bet 99% of the folks in the bar were pretty glad to see them roll up.
50
@45 - you might have the touch of death....

or he was repeatedly trolling in an article about a fatal shooting in a bar we all love and they banned his account. Comment 14 (and a few others probably) were making fun of the bar and the people shot.
51
Well, it looks like Mr. G has been banished to the limbo of the unregistered. Poor thing. For whom will he demonstrate his elaborate feats of punctuation now that no one can see them?
52
@40 I think your statement is pretty much like saying I'm not sure how a shooting is possible because shooting a person is illegal. People do illegal things. The Twilight is not a nightclub, it's a neighborhood bar like on the show Cheers, so like most neighborhood bars people aren't strip searched on their way in. Also from this account it appears that Greg (the bouncer) did attempt to prevent the young man from re-entering, given that he was shot.....
53
Whoa, this is heavy. Glad you're alright, but is Lexi pissed at you for booking it, or what?
54
A little thought experiment... What if the perpetrator here did not have access to a gun? The realistic outcome would have been a fight that he would have survived and possibly a separation from his girlfriend. Not that great for everyone involved, but life would go on and time would allow for cooler heads to work out the situation.
Sure, in a worst case scenario a knife might have been used, but that requires a physical closeness in an attack that is harder to muster than pulling a trigger. Even in a rage, it's a lot harder to get into a knife fight. The gun just makes it too damn easy for a situation like this to get escalated into a fatality.
55
THANK YOU for banning Mr G. If he does it again please post his social security number.
56
@45

It's still signed Mr. G, just as an unregistered user. I wonder why #14 got a comment removed for trolling, but other troll comments are still around.
57
@56: 29 & 38 are gone, too.
58
@56 - I think the moderator is making a distinction between trolling about gun control in general, and trolling about the victims of the shooting. Comment #14 was making fun of the bar, victims of the shooting, and the writer of the blog post. Correct me if I am wrong, anonymous moderator.
59
@48 ingopixel: do you know if Steve-O used to bartend at the Buckaroo?
60
> the wound severed his femoral artery

Jesus, he easily could have died. You can bleed out in minutes if that artery is cut clean through.
61
@47

Your well-reasoned and articulate comments are refreshing. Calling me names while illustrating my point for me is more than I could hope for.

You are correct. "Laws don't eliminate crime."

I can't say it better myself. To use your drunk driving analogy, most forms of gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars.

98% of it is feel-good bullshit that will have no effect on crime, which has been my overarching point since I first started commenting on gun control on the SLOG.
62
Damn you just up and bailed on your friend! LOL
63
@61- no, you are a fucking tasteless gun nut. You are continuing with it. You posted sardonic comments in an article about a shooting at a bar. You are an asshole. You are tasteless. You have completely no concern about the consequences of living in a society obsessed with guns. You want to provocate and post your tired trite gun nut bullshit in articles about tragic gun deaths. You know what? It's not name calling. It's is describing you accurately with words. Asshole. Troll. Gun Nut. Sociopath. Tasteless moron. My post to you was about your sardonic tasteless posts in the face of a tragedy. And you continued it with @61. Sarcastic comments, bleating anti-gun reg bullshit. Double check.

In summary, fuck right off. Take your tasteless sanctimonious gun worshiping bullshit to a post not about gun violence, you fucking idiot troll.

the end.

Thoughts anyone?
64
@61,

Given that the majority of gun crimes are committed by legally owned guns AND that simply owning a gun massively increases the risk that you will kill a loved one or a loved one will kill you with it, your comparison is faulty. A large number of "good", "law abiding" gun owners will eventually use their guns for assault or murder. Putting restrictions on ownership therefore would decrease gun crime. If you want to vociferously fight against the government taking your toys away, go ahead and do so, but don't pretend that this is an issue of "good" guys vs. "bad" guys like the paranoid twits at the NRA proclaim.
65
@28 As soon as I saw the first few words of your comment, I knew it was you. I'm glad that you sound to be doing good. You and I go way back to the days of the D. Your story is emblazoned in my memory forever and I never have looked at that gas station the same and yet it always reminds me of you.

Condolences to the TE victims. Really, really sorry this happened to you all.
66
Apparently news of the gun but back didn't reach the ghetto. Maybe send ghetto correspondent Mudede in for an "exclusive". Nah, he's too much of a pussy. Just blame law abiding gun owners for everything. It's easier.
67
@66 You're an asswipe.

Marti - do listen to the comments about PTSD and counseling. PTSD exhibits itself in a variety of ways, often time delayed, and it's wise to go in - even for a few sessions - and let someone help you sort things out. Sometimes in our haste to be all better and return to normal, we push past things that should be dealt with, only to pay for it later.
68
Oh my god, Marti! I'm SO thankful you're okay. I was thinking about this all day and how we were always there on Sunday nights. I can't believe you witnessed this. Please let me know if you want to talk.
69
@66: You make a good case for a Pry-The-Guns-From-Their-Cold-Dead-Fingers program.
70
The Stranger was so glad you were there, Marti. Now they that have that oh-so-important personal connection to bray about until the end of time. Actually getting struck would've suited Goldy better, but this will have to do.
71
@54: A lot of unproven, and probably unprovable, pre-suppositions underlying your remarks.

According to a criminologist who appeared on KUOW's "The Conversation", who supports gun control (but not as a means of reducing mass killings, he thinks it might be more useful in reducing the run of the mill gun crime on the street), stopping access to guns, which is not possible (but could be greatly reduced) won't stop mass killers. They are intellegent, determined, and usually acquire the means. Another in his field has calculated that the average mass killing with guns is 5.46 victims, knives are just over 5. Firebombing is over 20 victims per incident. So gun control might have merit, maybe even in cases like this, but not for the Cafe Racer, Clackamas Town Center, or Newtown horrors.

This appears to have been a crime of passion with a determined attacker. He came back twice and then committed the crime on his third time. Limiting the guy to knife would have deterred him? Really?

Gun free zones don't work. Newtown was a locked facility with a camera. The owner of Clackamas Town Center prohibits them and trespasses and removes anyone known to have a gun. So are bars in Washington State and this is the third bar murder in six months. Objectively and factually, all they do is disarm the law-abiding.

Texas, yes that Texas, requires Concealed Handgun Licences (CHL) to take 8 hours of class time to get a CHL. It includes instruction on the lawful use of force, civil liability, and safe storage and handling of guns. You then do two hours on the range and must have minimum score on the target. You have to pass a background check and psych screen. All paid for by the applicant. I believe you can carry openly without a CHL or any other license or in your place of business or home.

Washington State's equivalent, the Concealed Pistol License (CPL) requires a $56 fee, getting fingerprinted, and a background check. Its good for 4 years. No training requirement of any kind. This should be fixed. You can't stop open carry of a gun without ammending the State Constitution which says that the right to carry a gun for self-defense is a right, but there is no right to carry concealed.

@63. Nobody tries to impinge on everybody else's right to drive (there is no such right in the constitution, but we treat driving that way) because some people abuse the right by drinking and driving and yet cars kill and injure more people than guns. Maybe if there was the broad acceptance of the right to own and carry guns in Washington State as there is in Texas, gun owners in Washington might be more open to common sense education, training, and competancy requirements like they are in Texas. It is counter-intuitive, but maybe the path to sensible gun regulation, is to get people like you to acknowledge people have as much right to carry for self-defense as people do to drive. That, more than anything else, would open the door to sensible regulation.
72
@71 If the shooter at Cafe Racer had had a knife instead of a gun, there is no way he would've killed five people that day. Some victims were shot while running away from the shooter. You can't do that with a knife. So please fuck off, my friends died, and you are wrong.
73
@72, I am very sorry for your grief and loss, but the data says otherwise.

He would have thrown gasoline in a bottle through the front door and killed them all and it is possible the death toll would have been higher. Do you then outlaw gas because it is dual use technology that millions use for recreation and necessity but is mis-used by a few?

The criminologists that study mass murders tell us that is how they "swing". Gun control, may, or may not, be a help for reducing other gun crimes, but not the likes of Ian Stawicki. According to those criminologists that study mass murder and mass murders, they are unstoppable.

I am sorry for your loss that horrible day, but the data on mass muderers is pretty clear, they find a way, and when they do, they take as many as they can by whatever means they can, then when confronted with a person who can stop them (in Stawicki's case a cop, in the case of the Newtown a cop, in the case of the Clackamas Town Center shooter a licensed citizen carrying concealed) they take their own life.

That inconenient truth doesn't help your grief, but its the data, and even those academic experts that study that data, and support gun control, say its so.
74
Strangersworstnightmare, if you really are the worst thing that can ever happen to The Stranger, it is truly a fortunate publication.

I guess we can be thankful that this was an "old-fashioned" shooting, instead of one of those awful nihilistic massacres that are so common these days, and I'm glad to hear the young man will recover. This event will certainly not dissuade me from going to the Twilight in the future. That would be almost as dumb as thinking that the CD (or anyplace in Seattle, for that matter) is "a ghetto". Go spend some time in the Rust Belt, and you'll see what I mean.
75
@73, the data on mass murderers is pretty clear: they use firearms far more frequently than any other method. because firearms are easy to acquire, & easy to use. stawicki COULD have thrown a molotov into the cafe, but he didn't. he used his guns, guns that he loved and possessed legally.
76
@61 - Everyone that drives knows that drunk driving is a bad idea, but some people do it anyway. But - fewer do it because of the laws. Crime elimination is a preposterous bar.

How about this scenario? (I'm actually curious of your thoughts on it.)

Imagine if a child finding a loaded gun in the house and firing it or bringing it to school, etc. - even with no injury - would land the parent in jail for the night and revoke their license to buy ammo for a year.

And to be clear, this ammo-buying license involves ZERO purchase-tracking or amount limiting, and to get the license you'd merely have to pass a test on gun safety. BUT: you couldn't buy ammo without it, so if it's revoked out of your own recklessness, you're out of luck.

Now, there still would be people who are stupid about gun safety, but I guarantee you that this law would reduce the number of kids getting killed. Partially because they would be required to at least KNOW that leaving a loaded gun where your kid can find it is a bad idea. But really, the threat of not being able to buy ammo would scare them more.

After all, people who drive drunk are far more afraid of getting caught and losing their license than they are of killing someone.The thought never even occurs to most of them.
77
@76, there is a Marysville cop, minus his daughter, because he did not do what he should have to secure his gun, who was charged with manslaughter. I have no problem with that.

Even without an injury or death, the crime of Reckless Endangerment applies.

There is a Spokane cop facing the loss of his job for failure to properly secure his firearm in his home and his kid getting hold of it. As it should be! You excercise a freedom, particularly when you have the training of a cop and are subject to your departments policies, you also have a responsibility and are accountable for what happens if you excercise it negligently or recklessly.

I would take it a step further, let's do what Texas does, require every concealed pistol license holder to take a class, qualify on a range, and re-qualify in five years. That 8 hours of classroom education needs to include instruction on safe storage and case studies of what happens when you don't excercise the right responsibly.

In Washington State, there is no class. Pay the fee, get fingerprinted, pass the background check, and you are done. That was all Stawicki had to do to legally carry his gun concealed in public (he could have carried it openly without a permit). Even then, as stated before, the additonal barrier would not have stopped him since the pathology of mass murders, or "grievance killers" as Sen. Fienstien more precisely calls them, means they will find the means, somehow.

Such a requirement for training and qualifying to get a concealed weapons permit could be uphelp as constitutional since the Washington State Constitution has a right to have a firearm for self-defense (it is more specific than the US Constitution) but does not confer a right to carry concealed (which would imply you want to take it off your property or outside your business loaded).

@75, would you feel better if they were killing with firebombs or knives? Are they more dead because the means was a firearm? Would the loss felt by Jack Chandelier and others that knew Stawicki's victims be lessened if the means of mass murder changed? I don't think they would be, and the data on mass murders like Stawicki is clear, they will find a way. We take away guns and they will switch to another means that, because they are intent on mass murder, making a statement, getting more notoriety then the last guy, etc., is likely to be more lethal, not less. They are very small percentage of homicides in the U.S. and anywhere else, but their particular pathology makes them unstoppable no matter what weapons restrictions are in place. We need to focus limited civic energy and political capital on things that have the potential to save more lives, such as requiring those that choose to excercise rights to carry handguns to be educated in their use and laws that make them culpable when they commit negligence and recklessness in excercising those rights. That needs to include how they secure and store those weapons when they are not in use. I would also add to that list, selling or transfering a firearm to another without a background check to that list. In 1993 those kinds of checks were cumbersome and difficult. In today's world, they could be done from a smartphone, so it is not the imposition that it once was.
78
@63

For The Win!

Your soaring elocution has won me to your side. But first, how does my tastelessness compare to Goldy using a terrible fire that killed 249 innocent people to obliquely grind his gun-control axe?

Hell, the bodies hadn't even cooled. Where were you then? Where was your rhetorical genius then?
79
out of curiosity, what is the ethnicity of the shooter?
80
@77 - I didn't ask about a cop's carelessness in killing his daughter. Respond to my actual scenario. Or don't, if you're worried that your answer will make you seem unreasonable.
81
@79 I don't see how that makes a difference.
82
@77, I don't think taking away their bullets for a year will do much. My point was there are criminal penalties already, as their should be.

Back to your original analogy, a drunk loses his license but still drives. The drunk does so without the license. But they are a small sub-set of all drivers. We don't punish all drivers because of their recklessness and disregard for others.

Your original scenario about what would motivate a gun owner does two things. It lumps them all together in a monlithic block. People are gun owners for a variety of different reasons. A survey of purchasers of the AR 15, which is the most popular semi-automatic rifle in America (over 3 million sold, and climbing off the charts in the wake of Fienstiens legislation) indicates that (give me a little lattitude, its been awhile) roughly 54% bought them for target and/or competition shooting (a big reason for gun ownership in Norway BTW, which has nearly the same rate of gun ownership, but not nealry the levels of violent crime and gun crime in particular), 19% for for self-defence and 27% for hunting. In the interest of full disclosure, I don't own one and don't want to own one. With handguns it is probably more self-defense, but I am not aware of a similar survey.

No, I think the key is firearm purchaser background checks and firearm purchaser education (mandatory where constitutionally possible, like when someone wants a hunting license - hunting is not an inumerated constitional right and neither is concealing a weapon).

This is what we do with a drivers license in all cases. That is possible because driving, unlike keeping and bearing arms for self-defense (Washington State Constitution) and keeping and bearig arms (US Constitution).

To get to that mandatory piece of gun owner education, you need the broad political support for gun ownership (e.g. Texas) that will allow gun owners to see it as a reasonablel obligation, accompanying excercise of the right, rather than an subterfuge to begin taking away gun-rights (i.e. an 80% range score at 21 feet is reasonable, a 95% range score at 50 feet is not reasonable given the limits of handgun technology and would allow the right in theory, but not in practice).

In my experience, the guy who does what this guy did at the bar, is going to get and use a gun no matter what. If he can't get a gun, he will get something else, that may or may not be as lethal, so weapons restrictions won't work, just like taking away a drivers license doesn't work for a drunk. There is another sub-set of gun owners that bother me nearly as much. Those that decide they have waited once too long while the 7 minute police response comes, someone rampages through their house while they cower in hiding, someone is seriously hurt, someone dies. They get the gun because they feel powerless (and they are for those 7 minutes) and then load it and shove it in a drawer, unsecured. That raises the odds of theft, accidental discharge, having the gun taken from them and used on them, suicide, etc. The tool without the know-how and some training is probably worse that no tool at all.
83
I can only imagine how disturbing this experience was for you, but I wanted to say thanks for bearing witness.
84
Kind of an irony the SPD came in to save all the cop hating, Slogging white hipsters who scream racism every time a cop touches someone in this town.
85
"what is the ethnicity of the shooter?"

He was, according to Cap Hill blog, a regular in the hip-hop scene, therefore the kind of gun nut Slog embraces and reviews in the music section for being an 'authentic voice of urban struggle and oppression'.

She, apparently, likes leaving her 9 month old child at home alone.

A real pair of urban winners.
86
Oh my God, Marti----I'm so relieved to hear that you're all right! How is Lexi?
Holy fucking SHIT----what does one do after witnessing something like that?!?
87
I am Marti's dad, and she took me to the Twilight Exit on February 17. We were both curious to see how strange we would feel to be in the place where she could have easily died. I won't bother trying to write down the metaphysical stuff that swept over me, but I will say it is a nice bar and there were good people there, employees and patrons. I had some rum and cokes, Marti had some beers, we ate some nachos, she chatted with friends and the ones who were there the night of the shooting said they were glad she was okay and she said the same to them. Marti sang a wonderful song during karaoke, and lots of other people sang and that was good, too. Marti and I played Ms Pac-Man and she beat me by about 10 to 1 on her good games and about 5 to 1 when she felt like giving the old man a break. She said she understood I was slow cause I was about a hundred years old, but I was really feeling like I was a thousand. I am grateful beyound words to Greg the bouncer, the police, the medical people, and everyone who helped. I am grateful the shooter let Marti leave, and didn't shoot Lexi when he easily could have. Life may be now just a happy accident, but I hope we all get the chance to be at least 100. It was good to see people enjoying life at the Twilight Exit, and to be enjoying it with them.

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