SEATTLE — This summer, Seattle saw three mass shootings: one in Capitol Hill during an illegal street racing event; outside a Safeway in Rainier Beach; at a Hookah Lounge in South Seattle.
Those acts of violence illustrate a disturbing trend.
“One of the things that we did notice especially in the month of July was we had eighteen cases where twenty rounds or more were fired. In some of those cases you're talking about dozens and dozens of rounds. Close to one-hundred rounds in some of those cases,” said Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz.
From those and other crimes, Diaz said more than 700 guns, a department record, have been recovered. Each gun, plus shell casings, are sent to the department’s crime lab for testing, which aims to link shooting scenes where the same gun is used over and over.
The testing at the department’s crime lab uses the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, known as NIBIN, through the ATF. A machine creates a high definition image of a bullet casing - each gun leaves behind distinctive marks, essentially like a fingerprint. The images are uploaded to a federal database and within an hour potential matches are provided.
Once there is a match likely linking two crime scenes to the same gun, that lead is then sent to detectives and prosecutors. This is something Seattle police see regularly.
“We're averaging a little over 300 cases this year so far that have been used in two cases or more. We recovered 115 of those guns that have been used in two or more cases,” Chief Diaz said.
That includes one of the most high-profile crimes this summer that gained national attention, when 34-year-old pregnant Eina Kwon was shot and killed seemingly at random in Belltown. The gun used by her accused killer was reportedly stolen from Lakewood. The NIBIN crime lab linked it to a drive-by shooting in Tacoma in August of 2021. Investigators said there’s no telling who else may have had the gun before.
“Sometimes people are using the gun and moving it on to somebody else or sometimes you have somebody using the gun multiple times to commit violence and potential homicides throughout the community,” Diaz said.
Those guns are also found to be used in surrounding King County cities, and Diaz said the technology is one component to curb gun violence.
“I can tell you we are working diligently throughout our day making sure we solve these cases and bring safety to the community,” Diaz said.