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.
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