SEATTLE — New video shows the moment a person shot a man in the Central District Monday afternoon, causing at least one window of a daycare to shatter as 24 kids were inside.
The video shows a car doing a U-turn in order to pull up next to a man who was walking on the sidewalk. Someone in the car then puts their hand out of the window, holding a gun, and shoots the man on the sidewalk. The man was able to walk away after falling to the ground.
On Tuesday, Harborview reported the victim was in “satisfactory” condition
Now the daycare that had its window shattered in the shooting is making safety changes and is calling on the City of Seattle to make changes as well.
Appellonia Washington, a co-owner of A4 Apple Learning Center, said on Tuesday that they were looking into bulletproof glass, which she said would cost thousands of dollars more than normal windows
“They're ridiculous,” said Washington of the price of bulletproof windows. “But we got to feel safe."
The daycare closed Tuesday and Wednesday for mental health days for the staff, families, and around two dozen young children who were in the learning center at the time of the shooting.
“There's still tons of glass,” said Washington. “I need to go in there again to see if there's any more bullet fragments."
Washington said it was a traumatic experience for the kids and staff
“We all work together to keep the children calm, and at the end, we cry,” said Washington.
Inside the window of the daycare stands a whiteboard that says “Stop The Gun Violence.”
Washington said she has been asking the city for two years to help with gun violence in the Central District and wants to see more police patrolling the area. Washington said the Mayor came to the daycare Tuesday morning to speak with her and she's hoping to see action.
“Hopefully since a shooting took place in front of a learning center where there are children, that they step it up and actually put something in place,” said Washington.
Right now Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is pushing the city council to approve his proposed budget, which includes $1.8 million of salary savings from the Seattle Police Department to be reinvested in gun violence prevention technologies. Those include automatic license plate readers, surveillance cameras, and systems that can pick up the sounds of gunshots to alert police.
“As we rebuild the department, these technologies help us with a shortage of officers,” said Mayor Bruce Harrell. “It gets us good intelligence.”
Last year the city council did not approve the mayor's ask for gunshot detection systems. Some groups were concerned the technology would lead to an overreaction by police, which could be damaging to communities of color.
“We'll make sure that we view everything through a race and social justice lens,” said Mayor Harrell. “We'll do all of that work, this critical work, to make sure we're not profiling communities or people. But again, this is good technology intended to protect our community.”
As the mayor said he is trying to get more tools and police officers to prevent gun violence, the co-owner of this daycare hopes some kind of change comes soon.
“I need to feel safe, I need my family to feel safe,” said Washington of her staff and kids.
No one has been arrested yet for the shooting.
The Mayor’s Proposed Budget is scheduled to be voted on by Seattle City Council on Nov. 29.