As Seattle's mayor delivered a televised address on the city's homelessness crisis Tuesday night, the police investigated a shooting at a homeless encampment there that left two people dead and three critically injured.
Police responded to reports of gunfire at the camp, a makeshift tent city known as "The Jungle" on a highway embankment, at about 7:20 p.m. Tuesday. They found five people with gunshot wounds, said Seattle's police chief, Kathleen O'Toole. One victim died at the encampment, another was declared dead at a hospital and three others were in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center, she said.
Seattle's assistant police chief, Robert Merner, told reporters that the authorities had reason to believe that the shooting "was very targeted." He said two "persons of interest" were being sought, but he did not know if they had been living at the encampment.
The victims' ages were reported to be between 25 and 45, according to KIRO-TV.
Shortly after the shooting, Mayor Ed Murray gave a scheduled speech on homelessness and how the city was "dealing with an extraordinary crisis." He later traveled to the encampment, where he called the shooting a tragedy. The Jungle has been "unmanageable and out of control" for almost two decades," he said.
The mayor declared a state of emergency last fall, after the King County medical examiner's office reported that 66 homeless people had died through September, including 47 on Seattle streets.
"Maybe I should have issued the state of emergency months earlier," Murray said. "We've tried to do the best that we can given the circumstances we have, but obviously I'm going to question was I good enough at my own job. It's on me in the end."
More than 527 unauthorized homeless encampments were shut down by Seattle officials last year, up from 351 in 2014, according to a report by The Seattle Times.
The Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness and other advocates urged Murray in a letter last month to stop the "sweeps" of homeless encampments without offering alternative shelter.