MONDAY, APRIL 10 Today began the bloodiest week in recent Northwest
history, with this absolutely heartbreaking story from South Seattle.
Just after 8 pm this evening, a mother and her eight-year-old daughter returned
to their home on 50th Ave S. As they sat in their van on the inclined driveway,
the mother asked the girl (stationed in the rear of the van) to retrieve the electric
garage door opener. According to Seattle Police Detective Kevin Andrews, the steep
grade of the drive- way then caused the van to roll back, which caused the mother
to step on the brakes, which caused the young girl to tumble out the open door
at the rear of the van. Investigators believe the mother then attempted to brake
again, but accidentally stepped on the accelerator, causing the van to roll over
the girl before coming to a stop against two parked vehicles at the base of the
driveway. A Good Samaritan (remember those?) rushed the mother and child to a
nearby fire station, and a fire engine sped the pair to Harborview, where the
girl was pronounced dead from a skull fracture, brain-stem bleeding, and chest
injuries. Last Days has no wisdom to impart on such a tragic accident, but a neighbor
of the family (quoted in the Seattle P-I) summed it up as well as possible:
“Man, that’s a horrible thing.” (Minuscule “up” note: There were no other
instances of mothers accidentally running over their daughters reported in the
region today.)
TUESDAY, APRIL 11 The Northwest bloodbath continued today with a deadly
shooting in Tacoma. Two years ago, the smelly little burg to the south suffered
the worst crime in its history when five young men shot up the Trang Dai
Vietnamese restaurant, killing five people and injuring five others. Shortly
before 3 am this morning, Kay Kosal Sin, a 20-year-old man scheduled
to testify as an eyewitness in the Trang Dai massacre, was shot to death through
his bedroom window in the house he shared with his parents and four siblings.
The P-I reports that witnesses saw two men in their early- to mid-20s
drive off in a small, dark car. Meanwhile, Tacoma police say it “is not clear”
whether the shooting was connected to the Trang Dai trial. (Puh-leeze.) Not-so-minuscule
“up” note: The hail of bullets fired at Sin somehow missed Sin’s 19-year-old
brother, who was asleep on the bunk below.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12 Our week of carnage reached an atrocious apogee today
as Seattle police shot and killed David John Walker, a skipping, gun-toting,
knife-wielding shoplifting suspect with a history of misdemeanors and mental
problems. The saga began today around 1 pm, when the 40-year-old Walker allegedly
swiped a carton of milk or juice from the Safeway at First and Mercer. Upon
being confronted by a security guard outside the store, Walker fired two shots
at the man, both of which missed. Police were called, and Walker was tracked
down a short time later near Seattle Center. A cadre of police ordered the knife-wielding
Walker to freeze and put down his weapon; Walker refused. Police doused Walker
with pepper spray; Walker didn’t respond. And as Walker skipped toward police,
making a sudden movement with his left arm (the arm not holding the knife),
one of the police officers fatally shot Walker in the chest. The trigger-happy
officer (a 15-year police veteran) has been placed on administrative leave,
pending results of an internal investigation. And oh yeah: David John Walker
was black. (On a deeply negligible “up” note, Seattle can now rightly
identify itself as a major modern city, with a snazzy pro stadium, a glittering
Tiffany’s store, and murderously racist cops.)
THURSDAY, APRIL 13 Today: a much, much lighter tale of murder — this one
from Seattle’s Burke-Gilman trail. Early this afternoon, a local bicycling
enthusiast was buzzing down the beloved trail when he reached an area populated
by numerous chickens. As generous bystand-ers tossed the birds (described
by the cyclist as “beautiful”) handfuls of feed, one klutzy chicken wandered
out onto the trail — and straight into the path of our cyclist’s speeding wheels.
And while our biker felt terrible about running over the poor bird, he didn’t
stop, as the grounds were spiked with signs reading “$350 Fine for Killing
Chickens.” There is no “up” note to this story — especially when one considers
that $350 is probably more than the trigger-happy Seattle police officer will
be penalized for killing David John Walker.
FRIDAY, APRIL 14 From the literal to the figurative: Today brought a
bloodbath on Wall Street, as the nation’s most pretentious casino offered
a humbling “fuck you” to investors and traders of all stripes with the biggest
single-day stock loss in Wall Street history. Last Days won’t pretend to
understand all the technical mumbo jumbo of Nasdaq composites and short-term
interest rates and margin calls; suffice it to say that newspaper photos of
history-ignoring, Pacific Place-frequenting, nouveau riche clutching their faces
in agony filled us with equal amounts of dread and glee — dread over what such
a crash portends for all of us, glee in imagining countless fledgling dot-commers
and men of stock-portfolio leisure learning to recite the words, “Would you
like fries with that?”
SATURDAY, APRIL 15 E is for Edward, whose art was quite odd, G is for
Gorey, dropped dead on Cape Cod. It’s only fitting that this week of macabre
mayhem should bring the death of Edward Gorey, the much-beloved,
morbid-as-shit writer and illustrator of such classic books as The Gashlycrumb
Tinies, The Beastly Baby, and The Haunted Tea-Cosy. According
to the website Mr. Showbiz, spokespeople at the Cape Cod Hospital where the
75-year-old Gorey expired declined to identify the cause of death, but The New York Times reported that Gorey suffered a heart attack on Wednesday.
Over the course of his death-obsessed life, Gorey wrote over 90 books, illustrated
nearly 60 others, and designed award-winning sets and costumes for numerous
stage productions. Most importantly, his death conclusively answers a question
oft-asked by even Gorey’s many admirers, “Isn’t Edward Gorey dead?”
SUNDAY, APRIL 16 At the close of our week of bloody violence comes a
teensy ray of hope. Today on Bainbridge Island, a coalition of 350 students
from around Kitsap County gathered for an ambitious Human Rights Rally at Bainbridge High School. Over the course of the day-long workshop, a whole
bunch of kids somehow managed to shelve their seemingly all-pervasive apathy
to deal frankly with issues of drink and drugs (which many students admitted
to using strictly out of boredom), the stigma of homosexuality, the problem
of racism, and the threat of school violence. Sadly, the semi-groundbreaking
event passed all but unnoticed on the region’s media radars — a fact not lost
on Bainbridge Unity Council Member Karen Ahern: “The sad thing is, if a student
had pulled a gun or issued a bomb threat, the media would have found a way to
get there.”
Next week: less blood.
Send your Hot Tips to lastdays@thestranger.com, or phone the 24-hour Hot Tips Hotline at 323-7101 ext. 3113.
