TACOMA, Wash. — A man and a woman were found shot to death in Tacoma roughly 24 hours apart.
The first incident happened around 4:40 a.m. Wednesday. The Tacoma Police Department (TPD) responded to reports of a woman possibly being shot in a vehicle near S. 47th Street and Pine Street.
The victim, a 42-year-old woman, was found unresponsive in a vehicle. Officers had received reports of shots being heard in the area.
Her vehicle had crashed into a pole on the south side of S. 47th Street just before S. Pine Street.
Officers tried to revive her with life-saving measures, but fire personnel declared her dead at the scene.
The TPD is investigating the death as a homicide.
The second shooting took place just after 5:30 a.m. Thursday in a parking lot on the 8800 block of S. Hosmer Street, near the Econo Lodge Tacoma Mall.
Officers responded to the scene after receiving reports that a man had been shot. When officers arrived, they found a 35-year-old man unresponsive. Officers again began life-saving measures but were unsuccessful. The man was declared dead at the scene.
The man's death is also being investigated as a homicide, according to the TPD.
The two deadly shootings come amid a spike in gun violence across the region, along with the entire country.
As of Thursday morning, more than 32,000 people have died from gun violence in the U.S. so far this year, with an additional near 30,000 injuries caused by gun violence, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
In Seattle, Police Chief Adrian Diaz said, “people need to put down their guns” after a series of shootings over just one weekend, adding that 700 guns have been taken off Seattle’s streets in 2021 as of Aug. 31.
Last year saw a major rise in homicides in Tacoma, too, with the highest single year for murders since the early 90s.