Sgt. Cindi West: Hatchet attack and shooting took less than 15 seconds

King County Sheriff Sgt. Cindi West didn’t ask if the “good Samaritan” who shot a hatchet-wielding man near Burien Sunday had any actual experience shooting a gun. But she told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson that she did shake the 60-year-old man’s hand.

“I shook the guy’s hands because, you don’t want to see anybody die, good guy or bad guy, obviously, but we didn’t go there for a clerk that was murdered behind the counter, we went there because somebody that tried to attack and possibly murder other people was dead,” she said. “We don’t like to see anybody killed, but in this case, it looks like he stopped the inevitable.”

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At around 6 a.m. Sunday, a man wearing a ski mask and carrying a hatchet ran toward the customer and 58-year-old clerk at a 7-Eleven in unincorporated King County. West said the customer, who frequents the convenience store for his morning coffee, was standing behind the counter &#8212 with the clerk nearby &#8212 when the masked man ran toward them. She said the suspect chased the clerk behind the cash register and assaulted him with the hatchet. The customer, who has a valid concealed carry permit, reached over the counter and fired at least one shot, striking and eventually killing the attacker, West said. She said video footage showed the entire encounter couldn’t have taken longer than 15 seconds.

“(The customer) doesn’t take much time to act,” West said. “… He clearly knew what he was doing because he shot our suspect, didn’t shoot our clerk and probably saved his life.”

She said the customer told her he’d been carrying a gun since he was 21, and that he’d hoped to never need to use it, but that in this case it seemed inevitable.

“He was shaken up,” West said. “It wasn’t like he was standing there proud of what he did. He was clearly shaken up by the situation.”

West said the clerk and customer both said the suspect didn’t say anything during the attack.

Typically, detectives complete their investigation and send their findings to the prosecutor’s office to determine if charges should be filed. But West didn’t need to wait that long to form an opinion.

“I talked to the detectives at the scene, I talked to our shooter and I’ve seen the video and I just don’t see that there was anything else that this guy could have done,” she said. “In fact, as I said, I think he is a good Samaritan. I think he saved this clerk’s life.”

West said nobody really knows how they will act in this type of situation until they are facing it themselves.

“The one thing that will help that is training,” she said. “I don’t know if this guy had any training but he clearly made some good choices in the situation.”

The clerk suffered minor cuts and the customer was uninjured. West said the Medical Examiners Office was performing an autopsy Monday to get positive ID on the suspect and that toxicology tests would follow.

“We may never know what his motive was, whether it was robbery or he was whacked out and went in to attack them,” she said.