Harger: The Bite of Seattle shooter is still out there. SPD won’t release a description. Here’s what may be slowing this investigation down

Ten days ago, gang members turned the Bite of Seattle into a shooting gallery.

Two innocent people are dead. Carlos Sanchez Villalba, 44, was killed at the scene. Ashley Whitehead, 56, died at Harborview. A two-year-old boy was among four people wounded. A 19-year-old suspected shooter was killed in the crossfire. A 15-year-old was arrested with a ghost gun and a Glock modified with a full-auto switch.

Families are burying their dead. A festival that draws 350,000 people over three days is now a crime scene.

And I’m frustrated. I don’t have inside information. What I have is police reports, public statements, and the same questions you have. Ten days after a mass shooting that killed two innocent people at a food festival, there’s remarkably little we’ve been told. Let me walk through what we know, what we don’t, and why I think this investigation may be stuck.

At least one shooter is still at large, maybe more. SPD hasn’t released a description. We don’t know what they’re even looking for

The 15-year-old’s ghost gun was not the weapon that killed Sanchez Villalba and Whitehead. Court documents confirm it. The gun that killed two innocent people at a food festival has not been recovered. The person who pulled that trigger has not been arrested.

Ten days. No arrest. No suspect description released to the public. No sketch. No photo. No age, no height, no clothing description. Nothing.

At a press conference Friday, Interim Chief Andre Sayles said investigators are close to identifying another suspect but want to make sure they have the right person before acting. I understand not wanting to rush. I understand not wanting to name the wrong person.

But we’re past that conversation now. We’re at the point where families have held funerals and the public has been given almost nothing. We had to piece together from police reports that investigators identified five guns at the scene. Four were fired. Three were recovered, including one that wasn’t fired. That means two of the guns that were actually used in the shooting left Seattle Center with whoever carried them. The Seattle Police Department (SPD) didn’t volunteer that math. A reporter had to ask Sayles directly.

In other words, there are multiple people SPD is searching for, not just one suspect at large. Sayles, to his credit, was honest about the danger.

“Whenever there’s gun violence, there is danger to the public,” he said. “It would be reckless of me to say that it’s not.”

I appreciate the candor. But candor without information leaves people scared and guessing.

Is Washington’s juvenile interview law hampering this investigation?

We have absolutely no idea whether the other shooters are juveniles. Police haven’t said, and they may not be able to. But the one suspect in custody is 15 years old, and if any of the people they’re looking for are also under 18, that would explain a lot.

HB 1140, passed in 2021, requires police to provide a juvenile with an attorney before they can be questioned, searched, or held. The consultation can’t be waived. Defense attorneys invoke the right to silence immediately. Every time. The law doesn’t distinguish between a witness and a suspect, so if everyone involved is a juvenile, police can’t talk to any of them, and the lawyers tell them all to say nothing.

We’ve watched this before. In 2024, 15-year-old Mobarak Adam was shot and killed inside a community center steps from Chief Sealth High School. Three teens were in the room. Police identified all three. Couldn’t interview one. Unsolved. That same year, 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Payne was shot and killed outside Garfield High School in broad daylight, a camera caught someone holding what appeared to be a firearm, and the case is still unsolved because police say they need a witness willing to make a positive ID.

Now the Bite of Seattle. A 15-year-old in custody. At least one more shooter at large. And a law that may be making it nearly impossible for police to build the case.

The code of silence and what it means for the people who died

Gang members aren’t going to identify the shooter. That’s the wall every one of these investigations hits. The witnesses who know the most are the ones who will never say a word, because in that world, talking gets you killed faster than the crime that started the whole thing.

And it’s not just the gang members themselves. The people around them, the girlfriends, the cousins, the guys who were standing ten feet away, they know the rules too. Everybody saw something. Nobody saw anything. That’s how it works, and the detectives investigating this case know it, and the gang members know the detectives know it. The whole system runs on silence, and two people who went to a food festival on a summer Sunday paid the price for it.

A 2-year-old took a bullet. And the people who know who did it are choosing silence over justice for a child.

One clarification: there was no ‘eighth victim’

Early reporting described an “eighth victim” who self-transported themself to University of Washington (UW) Medicine and disappeared before police could talk to them. SPD has since clarified that was a misunderstanding. The person was a 27-year-old man already counted among the seven shooting victims. He checked himself in Sunday evening, was treated, and was released within hours. There is no mystery eighth victim.

Ten days. No description. No murder weapon. No arrest

Barnes was effectively fired. Mayor Wilson asked him to resign over the botched communication in the first hours after the shooting. Sayles accepted the interim job knowing the stakes.

Nobody’s asking for a rushed arrest. We’re asking for what can be shared without compromising the investigation. A description. A timeline. Something that tells 350,000 annual Bite of Seattle attendees whether it’s safe to come back. Something that tells the families of Carlos Sanchez Villalba and Ashley Whitehead that the city is closer to justice than it was a week ago.

Ten days. Two people buried. A murder weapon in the wind. At least one shooter still out there. And a city still waiting to hear what happened at its own food festival.

If you have any video or photos from the shooting, SPD has set up a portal to upload evidence. The tip line is (206) 233-5000.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

Follow @https://twitter.com/kirocharlie