Burien machete attack victim speaks out

Burien resident Ryan O’Dell did not hesitate for a moment when he witnessed two intoxicated men harassing a homeless man with a dog.

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As O’Dell was walking downtown Burien with his fiancée early in the evening on April 18, two drunk men stumbled out of a restaurant and started throwing the homeless man’s few possession’s into the street.

“The guy whose stuff was being rummaged [through] was a friend of ours … and his little Chihuahua dog, Jorge, we all love the little dog,” O’Dell told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

When O’Dell’s fiancée told the men to lay off, they turned toward her. O’Dell immediately jumped in to protect her.

“When I ran up, it was fisticuffs immediately,” he described. “I got hit with something — it was a belt or a chain and kind of stunned me. I got pushed back into the bush … like a turtle on its back.”

One of the men pulled out a machete and began striking O’Dell with it repeatedly. O’Dell shielded himself with his arm, trying to protect his vitals. The attacker gave O’Dell several lacerations on his left arm, a deep laceration on right knee, lacerations all over his head, and injuries on his left knee that were so serious, they warranted surgery.

O’Dell believes the men were trying to kill him, but has no idea why they would do such a thing.

“I don’t know what was going through their minds,” he said. “I do know that they were intoxicated — very intoxicated.”

Four days out of Harborview, O’Dell is slowly recovering, but the problems that caused his situation are not going away.

The atmosphere in Burien in recent years has gotten beyond scary, according to O’Dell. A lifelong resident of Burien, he has watched the streets of his city go from peaceful to dangerous.

“It’s getting very, very bad. And people aren’t paying attention to what needs to be paid attention to … A place that used to be a really tight community where we all looked out for each other is not feeling the same anymore,” he said.

He blames city officials, in particular the city council, which he said “has been given ample warnings over the years and ample opportunities over the years to be able to resolve a lot of the issues.”

Still, if the scenario were to happen again, O’Dell has no doubt that he would take the exact same actions to protect his loved ones.

“It’s something that’s not right and you don’t allow it,” he said. “To stand by and watch and not do anything is worse in my eyes than the people who are actually doing it.”

To contribute to O’Dell’s medical expenses, visit his GoFundMe page.

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