SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Insanity as man throws metal sheet at car from Seattle overpass

Oct 18, 2019, 2:16 PM | Updated: 4:13 pm

overpass...

This piece of metal was thrown at a driver's car from an I-5 overpass. (KIRO 7 TV)

(KIRO 7 TV)

A couple of days ago, a guy was driving to work at 5:30 a.m. in Seattle when a huge piece of metal came crashing through his windshield from an overpass, barely missing his head.

It turns out that he was driving near an I-5 homeless encampment when someone out of their mind standing on an overpass guardrail decided to, in an act that could easily have been deadly, throw a giant piece of metal at cars below. The perpetrator has not been caught.

The driver, Wade Anderson, told KIRO 7 TV that the metal hit his arm, making it instantly numb. Still, he feels lucky because his wife sometimes commutes with him and sits in the spot where the metal hit.

Here you have a taxpaying, working, productive citizen who probably didn’t want to get up for the alarm at 4 a.m. But he did so anyway, because that’s what we do as taxpaying, hardworking, productive people. We do things that we don’t want to do, like get up early and drive to work. Now this poor guy no longer feels safe even taking the same route to work.

Dori: Revolving door of justice now partially responsible for a death

What is it going to take? I really mean this.

There was the woman who was nearly thrown off an overpass onto the freeway by a prolific offender a few months ago. That clearly should have been charged as attempted murder. If Good Samaritans had not come to her aid, she would have certainly died, considering the height and the speed of the cars. But, our prosecutor has a revolving door of justice, so he called it attempted assault.

What is it going to take?

In the brand-new city of Seattle budget, they’re proposing over $100 million for homelessness. Councilmember Sawant does not want any more sweeps of the camps; she wants to use the money to build more tiny houses. “Housing first” alone is the wrong solution to homelessness. As long as drugs are effectively legalized and property crime is effectively legalized by our prosecutor’s unwillingness to prosecute it, then no matter how many people we house, more drug addicts will continue to come here.

Sawant shouted on Thursday, “If you are fed up that your lives suck so badly, proudly embrace the struggle we are in.” Oh, I’m fed up. But she is the problem. Life “sucks” for a lot of us here — like for the business owners trying to make a living despite the drugs and crimes and trash everywhere. And Sawant thinks that the solution is more of her policies?

What is it going to take?

Is it going to take a politician’s loved ones being hurt or killed by one of these maniacs? I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want them to have to pay the dearest price of sorrow. But I don’t want anybody else to, either.

There needs to be huge change on the city council a few weeks from now. Otherwise, we will continue to do things exactly wrong around here.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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Dori: Insanity as man throws metal sheet at car from Seattle overpass