Over the weekend, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) released surveillance and bodycam video of an SPD officer shooting a man in the secure parking lot of the department’s Southwest Precinct facility on March 19. After a brief standoff with officers, Urban Andrew Seay, 36, was shot dead by Officer Kyle Hay. The death has been listed by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office (MEO) as a homicide. Hay has since been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

Per the SPD’s Blotter blog, Seay’s wife called 911 just after noon last Wednesday and told dispatchers that her husband had been making suicidal statements and was in the Home Depot parking lot abutting the precinct. Surveillance video then shows Seay scaling the fence of the precinct’s secure lot. He is then approached by officers who ask him to exit the lot and direct him to a door in the fence.

Upon reaching the door, he stops, turns around, and draws a small folding knife. At this point, officers put distance between themselves and Seay, commanding him to drop the knife. One officer draws a taser and tells Seay, “Hey, stay down on the ground, please. Go ahead and put the knife down.”

Officers then begin asking one another to group up further from the suspect and locate a “40” —short for a 40mm launcher, a less lethal weapon that fires either a large sponge-tipped slug or a number of smaller rubber pellets; it’s meant to stop subjects with pain and impact.

Seay backs away before rounding two parked police cruisers. As he comes around the cruisers, he begins moving towards the group of officers at a walk. A chorus of officers says, “Hit him with the 40! The 40, the 40,” as Seay speeds up. Video from another officer’s bodycam shows that officer firing off one 40mm round from behind and to the right of Seay. Almost simultaneously, Hay, who was directly in Seay’s path, begins firing his service pistol, killing Seay.

Police Chief Shon Barnes, in a statement immediately after the shooting, said, “Officers attempted de-escalation tactics to include the deployment of a less than lethal device. Those efforts were unsuccessful, and ultimately an officer, one officer, discharged his firearm, striking the person.”

Besides the egregious use of passive voice here, it’s worth noting that if Hay had decided his colleague’s 40mm cannon wasn’t going to do the trick, he did so in a matter of milliseconds. His pistol shots ring out about 600ms after the 40mm shot, based on a Stranger analysis using VidTimer. Human reaction time is about 250ms, so it’s not impossible that Hay saw the less lethal round miss, saw Seay closing with him, and shot the way police officers are trained to: at center mass until the threat has ended. But it’s safe to say that, while less lethal methods were deployed, the process of determining whether those methods had worked was quite literally split-second.

At least one local police accountability group believes Hay could have done more to defuse the situation.

“We believe strongly in de-escalation and de-escalation training. One of the main tenets of that training is time, distance, and cover. I did not see those tactics employed in this interaction, and it's disappointing,” says Dom Campese, a spokesperson for the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability (WCPA). 

Officially, whether the shooting proves justified or not will be a matter for the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to determine. OIG did not respond to The Stranger’s request for comment. But Hay has previously been the subject of 13 Office of Police Accountability investigations—four for use of force, though none of those were sustained.

Seay’s death very much appears to be a “suicide by police,” though Campese takes issue with that phrase, as he believes it’s misleading.

“If someone is in a mental health crisis, the goal is for law enforcement to help with the crisis, not to exacerbate it, and all too often, they're willing to oblige [the person wishing to die]. I think ‘suicide’ kind of takes away from the fact that the officers are killing the person. It's not suicide,” he says. 

The released video does not show officers aggressively pursuing Seay or pinning him in. They are predominately asking him, in a calm, polite manner, to please just leave the parking lot.

For Campese, the situation recalls the cases of Herbert Hightower and John T. Williams, both killed by police while holding knives. Fifteen years after police shot John T. Williams, a deaf Native American woodcarver who was also holding a small folding knife, our police officers still haven’t figured out how to incapacitate someone like that without killing them. And it’s certainly not for a lack of spending on less lethal technology, or a lack of distribution. In 2023, SPD showcased their investments in new less lethal weapons, including the BoloWrap, new tasers, and the 40mm launcher used in last week’s shooting. Real Change reported at the time that SPD said they expected every officer to carry at least one less lethal weapon.

WCPA pushed for House Bill 1310, which passed in 2022, that required new hires to complete de-escalation training within the first 15 months on the force, and ongoing training thereafter. But Campese argues that unless departments start holding officers accountable for failing to follow that training, there’s little hope for those affected by these kinds of shootings.

In the case of Seay, officers on the scene had both a taser and a 40mm cannon trained on Seay. They knew he was suicidal. He brandished a knife for several minutes before making any attempt to approach an officer. In theory, they could have popped him with a foam or three round the second he unfolded his knife. Why, in the end, was the 9mm the weapon they went with?

“You just really wish someone would take action here,” says Campese. “Maybe the new chief is the one to do it.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, help is available—call or text 988 or the King County Crisis Connections Hotline for confidential and free support 24/7.