‘I want life in prison’: Gee prepares for hard reality on Bite of Seattle shooting case as investigation narrows

More than a month after three people were killed at the Bite of Seattle, Seattle police said they are closing in on two potential persons of interest after reviewing hundreds of hours of surveillance video.

Interim Seattle Police Chief Andre Sayles told KIRO 7 that detectives have identified two people they want to question but stopped short of calling them shooters.

“I can say with confidence that we’re probably looking for two, but I wouldn’t call them shooters,” Sayles said. “We want to make sure that the video correlates with if they were shooters or were they on the other side of being shot at.

“We don’t want to have any injustices by taking someone in custody that may not be the actual shooter or involved in that situation,” he continued. “We want to know 100% that that is the person and bring that person to justice.”

KIRO host Gee Scott urged listeners to prepare for a reality that may not match the justice they have in mind.

Gee says no outcome will feel like enough

Gee noted he initially planned to come on the show with a different take, but stopped himself.

“I was really thinking about this, and I had a different way that I was going to talk about this, and then I had to check myself,” Gee said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “The person they have in custody is how old? Fifteen. The person they’re probably looking for, we don’t know who it is. It might be a possibility that they might be under 18. What I’m trying to say is the justice that we think of, when we think of justice, people are dead. They will no longer be coming back.

“They did this in broad daylight in front of all kinds of people,” he continued. “The justice that I think we have in our mind, I’m going to prepare you, it’s not going to happen. When I think of someone taking the lives of someone, I want life in prison. That’s what I want. I don’t know what justice looks like to you, but I’m just setting you up to let you know that the justice that you’re thinking about, it might not be what you think.”

Angela notes the political noise feels frivolous next to the loss

KIRO fill-in host Angela Poe Russell said the weight of the case makes much of the surrounding political debate feel small.

“What crushed me as you were talking about that was like, gosh, you know the gravity of it, of the lives that were lost, and the fact that you have a juvenile in custody, and yet all this energy on vacations and ‘Well, it was 30 minutes,’ and ‘It was this many hours,'” Angela said. “It makes a lot of it, the conversation, seem a little bit frivolous in comparison to the magnitude of the crisis that we’re dealing with. And our state laws have not made that any easier.”

Police have now reviewed 450 hours of surveillance video. One suspect was killed at the scene, a 15-year-old is in custody and charged, and investigators are working to identify the two additional persons of interest. Sayles said the investigation remains active.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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