SEATTLE (AP) — For the second time in less than 48 hours, there was a shooting in Seattle’s “occupied” protest zone, but the 17-year-old victim declined to speak with detectives, leaving the circumstances of the shooting unclear, police said Monday.
The shooting happened late Sunday night in the area known as CHOP, for “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest.”
It occurred in Cal Anderson Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood as demonstrators who had marched from the zone to the police department’s West Precinct downtown were returning there, officials said.
As with a 2:30 a.m. shooting in the same park Saturday that left a 19-year-old man dead and a 33-year-old man critically injured, responding police and emergency medics staged at the edge of the protest zone before going in, police said.
After police abandoned the East Precinct building there, protesters took over the area — with demonstrators painting a large “Black Lives Matter” mural on the street, handing out free food, playing music and planting a community garden.