SEATTLE — The woman critically wounded in Sunday's Pioneer Square shooting was not targeted, police said, as they urged anyone with information about the case to come forward.
Nicole Westbrook and her boyfriend were walking near Second Avenue and Yesler Way when several shots were fired from a moving car. One shot struck Westrbook in the neck.
"We believe this was a random act of violence," said Deputy Police Chief Nick Metz at an afternoon news conference.
Metz said a number of pedestrians in the area dove for cover when the shots rang out, but that "somebody knows something about what happened that night."
Police believe there was more than one person in the car, Metz said, and anyone in the car who doesn't cooperate with police is a "potential accessory" in the crime.
"We're begging you: The best thing that you can do is to turn yourself in," he said.
Officers are looking for a light-colored car seen in the surveillance video that captured the shooting, and said they want to talk to anyone who was at the scene.
Detectives will be monitoring a tip line for the next couple days. The number to call is 206-233-5000.
Westbrook was listed in critical condition Tuesday afternoon at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Victim had just moved to Seattle
Family members said Westbrook had just moved to Seattle three weeks ago to attend cooking school.
"My baby sister is a beautiful, young Navajo woman," Marcia Westbrook said. "She came here to start a new life with her boyfriend and to achieve one of her dreams and goals for culinary."
Westbrook's aunt, Joyce Esquer, also spoke.
"We believe that there are sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, mothers (and) fathers who know this person or who have information about who shot Nicole," she said. "We ask you to come forward and share this information with the police."
Wesbrook's shooting isn't the first time the family has been struck by tragedy.
Her father, Marshall Alan Westbrook, was the first National Guardsman from New Mexico to die in combat in Iraq. That happened in 2005.
"I miss my dad more than anything," Nicole wrote on her Facebook page.
In 2009, her uncle, Sgt. Kenneth Westbrook, was fatally wounded during an ambush in Afghanistan.
KIRO
