When Seattle police appeared below the giant, grinning evil clown atop the Funhouse on November 5 in response to reports of a stabbing, it appeared much of their work had already been done. Several bystanders offered ready accounts of the crime, and a group of concertgoers pushed forward two suspects, including the accused stabber. David Packman was offered to police with a gash across his nose and deep scrapes on his cheek and knees. His wounds, he said, came not from the fight inside, but from the beating he received from the crowd that chased him down, knocked him to the sidewalk, and turned him over to police.
From the witnesses, police learned that Packman, 36, and David Hinz, 23, started brawling on the dance floor sometime after 11:00 p.m. Their scuffle soon engulfed 26-year-old Shanne McKittrick. Two witnesses said they saw Packman stabbing McKittrick while Hinz contributed to the beating. The Broken Oars stopped playing in the middle of their set.
A group chased after the attackers, held them until police arrived, and explained what had happened. Packman and Hinz were booked into King County Jail in the early morning of November 6. Hinz went home on November 7, but Packman, as of press time, remains in jail awaiting arraignment.
Case closed, or so it seemed. Since the incident, several people who attended the concert, and friends of those who did, have contacted The Stranger with rumors that police nabbed the wrong man.
“I’m hoping someone out there will tell the truth,” Packman says, talking over an ancient plastic telephone receiver in a visiting booth at the county jail. He repeats what he told police at the scene: His role in the incident was only to separate two men who’d gotten into a fight. A few guys in the crowd, he says, singled him out incorrectly, perhaps arbitrarily, and the police went along with their word. “I think it’s a matter of convenience,” he says. “Wrong place. Wrong time.”
Packman, whose arraignment was scheduled for November 15, faces up to 10 years in prison.
Although Packman offers no proof in his defense, the investigation against him, with missing evidence and a few scrambled facts, shows how easy it is to get arrested and charged with a crime and kept in jail. To make an arrest, police need probable cause; in this case, the testimony of an angry crowd was enough.
Police at the club that night never tracked down the weapon used in the crime. They found a knife on Packman (he says it was a Swiss Army knife), but acknowledge that it wasn’t the weapon responsible for the one-and-one-quarter-inch cut in McKittrick’s right shoulder. No other knives were found.
A cursory look at the documentation of the investigation shows that police and prosecutors can’t even get their story straight. According to the first police report, the violence began with a fight between Packman and Hinz. A later police report says the initial fight erupted between Packman and McKittrick. A third document, the prosecutor’s case summary, asserts that both suspects attacked McKittrick, who was sent to the ground after being kicked by Hinz.
The victim himself was not alert at the scene, according to the first police report, “and could not provide any information as to what had happened.”
Packman guesses that when members of the crowd saw him pull one man off another, they assumed he had been involved. The club was dark. People had been drinking. Both he and Hinz, according to the prosecutor’s report, have clean criminal records.
Seattle police respond to 3,000 911 calls each night. They often arrive in the middle of unfamiliar situations, and are forced to sort out the details by interviewing witnesses. In this case, police attributed the outbreak of violence to a gang. Specifically, they sited FSU, or Friends Stand United, a loose alliance of tough hardcore fans. Although FSU’s stated goals rally against racism and for equality, they have been blamed for inciting meaningless violence (“Friends Stand Charged,” Megan Seling, March 2). Seattle Police, who referred to the group as “Fuck Shit Up,” cited the gang’s influence in their second report, but not the first, stating that one witness heard Hinz claiming membership in FSU, while another described both suspects as “the FSU guys.”
Packman, who identifies himself as an “old-school punk,” says he has nothing to do with FSU, and members of the gang likewise deny his association. The father of two sons, whose wife is pregnant, has a baby face and a convincing solemnity. He doesn’t really look like a bruiser, even though his black hair, shaved on the sides, is pulled back in a slicked ponytail.
Packman, who would not say where he works, says he makes too much money to qualify for a public defender, and is still trying to find a good lawyer he can afford. McKittrick was released from the hospital the day after the attack. 
ok, sorry for getting scared yesterday. your sounds kept me up all night, maybe i reckoned i was about to fall from a rood or something, so round about half past 10 i wuz thinking i was merely crazy & there were no such thing as ghost.