Blood trail leads police to Beacon Hill body

SEATTLE, Wash. — It was obvious this trail of blood would come to an ugly end.

Maybe that is why Miguel Castellanos saw the small puddles of blood leading from his apartment parking lot down an alley walkway and around his neighbor's fence -- but he didn't look any farther.

But more than an hour later, just before noon on Monday, one of his neighbors did.  In the 2300 block of 15th Avenue South, a woman followed the trail beyond the point where it curled onto private property.   There she found a man lying face down in the neighbor's backyard.  She called police.

"I was wondering where the blood came from," Castellanos explained, but he said he didn't imagine it would actually be a man slain steps from his front door.

Another neighbor, Ellen Palmer, has an apartment door that faces an alleyway and could just see the backyard where police were focusing their attention.  She got a glimpse of the slain man.  She looked away quickly but she couldn't shake the image even many hours later.

"That's what I see in my head, you know, it keeps coming back," Palmer said late Monday night.  "It just really shook me up really bad -- that someone could die so violently like that."

Seattle police have released very little information, saying only that homicide detectives are on the case.   The people who live on the property where the victim died say they were not home at the time, and they have no idea who he is.

KIRO 7 will continue to check with Seattle police about the identities of the victim and his killer, as well as a motive for the violence.

KIRO