‘No urgency’: Gee, Ursula slam response to Garfield student’s shooting death amid familial lawsuit

The family of a 17-year-old Garfield High School student who was killed just outside the campus last year is suing the school district.

The lawsuit alleges the school’s “negligent security practices” allowed Amarr Murphy-Paine, 17, to die, according to The Seattle Times. Murphy-Paine was killed on June 6. There have been no arrests related to the shooting, as of this reporting.

“So far as we have been telling you, no witnesses have come forward to ID the person who pulled the trigger, even though there were witnesses,” Ursula Reutin, co-host of “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio, said.

Gee Scott, co-host of “Gee and Ursula,” offered a solution.

“Ursula, here’s a solution. How much is the reward money? $50,000? Let’s make it $100,000. Let’s solve this case now,” Gee said. “There needs to be urgency, and I don’t feel that there’s urgency. I don’t feel that there’s urgency because it’s at Garfield High School. If this happened at Bellevue High School and there was video footage of someone losing their life, you mean to tell me a year later, we still wouldn’t have answers? There needs to be more urgency, and, in my opinion, it’s just not enough.”

Murphy-Paine was on the school’s varsity football team and was just days away from graduation when he was killed. According to the Seattle Police Department (SPD), he was allegedly trying to break up a fight between two other male students when an unknown individual shot him multiple times.

The lawsuit was filed by Amarr’s father, mother, stepmother, and brother. The family believes his death was preventable and was a culmination of open campus policies and inadequate security measures from the school.

“I think they’ve got a lot of details in this particular lawsuit that would help them win it, but it doesn’t bring their son back,” Ursula said. “But I don’t blame them for filing this lawsuit.”

“I don’t blame them either, and I really believe Ursula, in my heart, that there are a lot of people who actually probably know information that they’re sitting on,” Gee said. “Information that would help solve this case. Hence, the reason why I brought up the reward. I don’t think the reward money should come from the family. I think the reward should come from either the city or the district.”

Should school resource officers return?

According to KIRO 7, SPD Chief Shon Barnes said his department is ready to reinstall school resource officers onto campuses, but there are several hurdles in the way—one being lifting or removing a 2020 moratorium that suspended the district’s partnership with police, including removing officers from campuses.

“I am continuing to get angry, we were during our show in 2020 when the whole idea of taking resource officers from the school was happening, and both you and I kept saying, ‘No. No!'” Gee said. “And that was literally the same time you had screams for people saying, ‘Defund the police.’ ‘We don’t need police departments.'”

“I will tell you right now, because I just had a conversation with a current Seattle police officer who says that they are still dealing with the aftereffects of that whole (decision) to this day,” Ursula added. “I mean, they’re really trying to address that because it was a morale killer.”

Listen to the full conversation here.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.