- James Yamasaki
- “He told me he was going to kill me,” Chambers said under oath. “I believed him.”
Lovett Chambers says he was walking down California Avenue Southwest on January 21, 2012, when he noticed two men walking behind him. Even though Chambers had been living in West Seattle for nearly 20 years, he did not recognize the men. Chambers had enjoyed some cocktails and chatted with friends at the Beveridge Place Pub and the neighboring Feedback Lounge, a popular watering hole with an even more popular happy hour, and now he was going back to his car. He was heading home to see his wife.
But the two men were gaining on him, he says.
“They said, ‘Look at that nigger there, look at the way he’s walking, his mammy must have taught him how to walk like that,'” Chambers would later testify under oath. Chambers looked around. He was the only black man on the sidewalk. He quickened his step and made it back to his car, an old BMW. He got in and began to fasten his seat belt.
One of the two men who’d been following him yanked open the passenger-side door, Chambers says. A knife glistened in his hand. Then Chambers heard someone banging on the trunk…