SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
West Seattle Health Club VP says he knows who started $300,000 fire, but police won’t listen
Oct 29, 2018, 5:38 PM
Two weeks after an RV driven by suspects fleeing a robbery plunged into the West Seattle Health Club in the middle of the night, causing a gas leak that led to a fire, the health club’s vice president of operations believes he knows who is responsible for the crash that cost his business over $300,000 in damages.
“We have a very good idea of who it is and where they are currently living,” Lehr told KIRO Rado’s Dori Monson.
Not only this, but Lehr said that he is also aware of the identity of the parents of the RV owner. A health club member had seen the RV parked in front of a house on a nearby street and spoken to the home’s resident, finding out that these were the RV owner’s parents.
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Although Lehr has made the Seattle Police Department aware of this information and even sent photos, he said that he has heard no response.
“As of today, there have been no arrests at all,” he said.
He has spoken with “several different officers” who have come to the scene and taken down his information, but according to Lehr, there has been “really no follow-up by them as to any progress they’ve made.”
“It’s been disappointing to say the least,” he said.
Lehr had previously told Dori that the RV had been parked on the streets around the West Seattle Health Club for months, but, despite Lehr’s frequent phone calls and emails to the city, had been deemed not worthy of forced removal by the city.
An RV had even lost control and crashed into the West Seattle Health Club on a previous occasion. Luckily, no one has been injured in either of the runaway RV incidents, but Lehr worries that it is only a matter of time.
“If somebody gets killed, the blood of that victim’s hands is going to be on the hands of the Seattle City Council and the mayor’s office for not doing anything,” he said.
Lehr said that he suggested to Councilmember Lisa Herbold that the city ban overnight parking and provide the RVs with a specific place to go, but that no one at City Hall has responded to this idea.
“They have their egos wrapped up in the programs they’ve put out there” he observed, but, “they’ve got to take a good long look at their program and the fact that they’re not effective, take a step back, and go in another direction.”
Lehr does not buy city council members’ claims that more money is the solution to cleaning up the streets and getting people out of tents and RVs. The current city programs are solving nothing, he said, and until the approach changes, the problem will not get better.
“It’s just a waste of taxpayers’ time and money and SPD and the whole crew,” he said. “It’s a joke.”
