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Shootings near Seattle schools raise questions on youth gang violence
The deadly shooting investigation of two Rainier Beach High School students from Friday is ongoing.
SEATTLE, Wash. - The investigation into the deadly shooting of two Rainier Beach High School students remains ongoing, as Seattle continues to cope with a troubling pattern of teen violence near schools.
Friday afternoon, police say two teenagers were shot and killed at a bus stop near Rainier Avenue South and Henderson Street, just steps from Rainier Beach High School. By the weekend, a growing memorial of flowers, chalk messages and broken red hearts marked the spot.
Former SPD liaison turned community leader Victoria Beach, who has been taking calls and supporting the grieving community, said, "How many times have we been here? How many times?"
The backstory:
Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes calls it "the loss of potential," a phrase that has become painfully familiar in recent years.
- In December 2024, a 15-year-old Chief Sealth High School student was shot in the stomach and later died.
- In June 2024, Amarr Murphy Paine was shot and killed in the Garfield High School parking lot.
- In March 2024, a drive-by shooting outside Garfield High School sent a 17-year-old girl to the hospital.
- In January 2024, 15-year-old Mobarak Adam was found dead in a restroom inside the Southwest Athletic Complex community center near Chief Sealth International High School.
- In May 2023, a 19-year-old was shot near the Garfield Teen Life Center.
- And in November 2022, 17-year-old Ebenezer Haile was shot and killed inside an Ingraham High School restroom by another student.
Those cases represent only a portion of the times communities have mourned teens killed near or around Seattle schools.
"This is another wake up call. Do something," Beach said.
What they're saying:
Following the Rainier Beach shooting, Chief Barnes was asked whether Seattle has a teen gang problem.
"Yeah, we have group violence here in Seattle, whether they are organized gangs or they give money to a hierarchy, I don't know, but we do have organized group violence here, and it is a problem," Barnes said.
Barnes said the department reviewed data to identify repeat offenders — people caught with guns more than four times within an 18-month span.
"We came up with a list of about 90 people, and many of the people on that list are juveniles and so the question is, what do we do with that?" Barnes said.
Because juvenile court rules differ, Barnes said police cannot share names publicly and instead try to connect young people with community outreach organizations to intervene.
"It has to be five convictions before they're eligible from for some type of confinement," Barnes said.
Barnes said his stance on school resource officers has not changed.
"I understand that PD officers are there as a resource," he said.
Dig deeper:
Seattle Public Schools would have placed a "school engagement officer" at Garfield High School, but the proposal was voted down 5–2 in October.
During that debate, concerns about bias were raised.
"I don't trust that SPD will not have a strong bias against the BIPOC students at Garfiled," a student said in August 2025 while addressing the board ahead of the vote.
Others argued for officer presence in emergencies.
"We need individuals on campus to assist students in case of emergencies such as SROs," another student told the board.
Regardless of the acronym, the sense that some kind of officer presence could help continues to surface among students.
"Having officers around would help with the violence and all that, and it would definitely ensure that this kind of event is less likely to happen," Aiden Krebs, a Rainier Beach High School freshman said.
Mac Hardy, director of operations for the National Association of School Resource Officers, said teen arrests dropped nearly 50% nationwide between 1994 and 2009 — the same period when school resource officer programs expanded across districts.
Hardy said he understands students’ hesitation. A former SRO himself with 12 years of experience, he said proper training is critical and that the role requires careful balance between school administrators and police departments.
"Our role is to keep kids in school. We want to keep them there. We want to solve the problems. We want to help them solve the problems so that you know they feel safe when they walk through that schoolhouse door," Hardy said.
FOX 13 has reached out repeatedly to Mayor Katie Wilson regarding the topic of school resource officers but has not received a response.
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The Source: Information in this story came from Seattle Public Schools, the Seattle Police Department, the National Association of School Resource Officers and original FOX 13 Seattle reporting and interviews.