G&U’s top stories: Deadly shooting in Tacoma, Amazon offers Grubhub delivery with Prime

KIRO Newsradio’s Gee Scott and Ursula Reutin bring you their top stories on Thursday, July 7.

Violence continues in Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood

It’s happened again, another deadly shooting in Tacoma’s Hilltop. This time, the victim is a 14-year-old girl.

She was in a parked car with several other children when someone fired shots at the vehicle yesterday morning.

Police don’t have a motive and are still looking for the shooter. This is the 25th homicide in Tacoma this year and the deadly violence has prompted the co-founder of Ezell’s Chicken to temporarily close his restaurant in the Hilltop.

Lewis Rudd tells KING 5 NEWS there’ve been three separate shootings near his shop just in the past week. It reminds him of the Hilltop in the 80s.

Rudd thinks there are many reasons for the spike in violence and it’s not just the pandemic.

Until he can guarantee the safety of his employees and guests, the Hilltop Ezell’s location will remain closed.

The Tacoma Police Department is calling on anyone with any information to get in touch with them as soon as possible at CRIMESTOPPERS at 1-800-222-TIPS.

“We’ve talked about this issue of gun violence, sadly, almost every day … You can’t ignore the root causes like poverty and lack of education, instability,” Ursula said.

The CDC recommends that 15 counties in Washington state begin masking up, again

We might feel like we’re done with COVID, but the CDC says there are 15 counties in our state where you are at high risk for getting the virus. The agency is recommending masking indoors in public and on planes, buses, and trains. Some of the counties include Pierce, Thurston, Lewis, Chelan, and Spokane. High risk means the counties have had 200 or more new COVID cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days or more than 20 new hospitalizations with patients who have the virus.

Amazon offers “free” Grubhub membership with a subscription to Amazon Prime

Amazon is now getting into the food delivery business, offering free, one-year Grubhub memberships to Prime members.

The Grubhub membership would normally cost $9.99 per month. After a year, you will be charged that fee unless you deactivate the program.

Amazon Prime is now $139 a year and there are more than 200 million members worldwide.

As of May, Grubhub controlled 11% of sales, while DoorDash held 57% and Uber Eats had 31%.

“The reason this is brilliant is, even if you’re not normally a food delivery person, maybe you would be because ‘hey, I’ve already got my prime, it’s free, right?’ And then Amazon gets to bank on people like me who forget that you’ve signed up for something,” Ursula said.

Listen to the Gee and Ursula Show weekday mornings from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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