SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Weekend of shootings exemplifies danger of our region

Jun 19, 2018, 6:00 AM | Updated: 10:33 am

road rage, des moines, Everett, homicide rate, federal way, Shoreline...

(MyNorthwest file photo)

(MyNorthwest file photo)

It was a deadly weekend in Western Washington.

A motel clerk in SeaTac was murdered when some guys came in looking for money. The victim was a veteran who had served abroad. He survived his deployments, but not a weekend working in the Puget Sound region.

RELATED: Teen shot by Tumwater Walmart gunman thankful to be alive

A guy in Shoreline was shot and killed in his car close to Shoreline Christian School and Shorecrest High School. Police have not located a suspect.

In Belltown Sunday at 2 a.m., a man was shot and now is at Harborview with life-threatening injuries. That suspect has not been found either.

In Kent, a woman was found dying Saturday evening near a trail. Detectives are looking for suspects.

And then there was the shooting at the Tumwater Walmart, where a man shot a driver, paralyzing him, while attempting to steal his car. Before he got to Walmart, the man shot a 16-year-old driver in the hand. Thankfully, a heroic man at Walmart, who had a gun, was able to put a stop to the gunman. I love that about Tumwater — people there aren’t afraid to carry a weapon to defend their friends, families, and neighbors.

Jenny Durkan, Seattle City Council, Dow Constantine, Jay Inslee — are you all happy with the region you’ve built around here? Are you happy with the drugs, and the gangs, and the homelessness, and the cartels here? Because our Sunday night news is starting to sound more like Chicago’s Sunday night news.

In King County and Snohomish County, they have legalized the possession of a small amount of drugs. You can shoot up in the middle of downtown in front of a cop and nothing is going to happen to you. The criminals and addicts know that — so they have flooded our region from all around the country.

Think about the magnitude of crimes committed. The rapist at the Ballard auto dealership was from Texas. The attempted rapist at Golden Gardens was from Arizona. The homeless man who allegedly tried to strangle a tourist with a rope in front of the Space Needle earlier this month was from Colorado.

They are flooding our region. They know we are the most heroin-tolerant region in the country. Politicians will give them tiny houses in which they can shoot up. They’ve heard about Sally “Dime” Bagshaw, who said that she wants the city to “explore” buying drugs for addicts at safe injection sites. So who comes in? The drug lords.

The SeaTac motel robbery and murder undoubtedly involved someone looking for drug money. The guy at the Walmart in Tumwater may have been there to rob the store or maybe he was just whacked out. But we have turned into a desperate region because our politicians have turned us into a magnet destination for homeless drug addicts and the gangs and cartels that feed their habit. That’s why we have the worst property crime of any region in the United States.

This is the state of our state right now and I put all of this on our politicians. I challenge, once again, Jay Inslee — when are you going to speak about the carnage in your streets? I hear him talking on national television about green energy and Washington’s weed, but when is he going to speak out about crime? If he speaks about it, people might tie it to him when he runs for president in 2020. As for Bob Ferguson, he’s too busy suing the Trump administration over everything. I wouldn’t mind our top legal office in the state focusing on this rash of crimes we have around here. It has to be addressed.

 

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Dori: Weekend of shootings exemplifies danger of our region