SEATTLE — The Rainier Beach community gathered to mourn the loss of two teens who were gunned down at a bus stop Saturday afternoon. Hundreds showed up to a vigil to join the victims’ families in mourning.
A pair of trees near the bus stop have been transformed into memorials, covered in handwritten notes, candles and balloons.
“We’re going to move forward together,” Rev. Lawrence Willis said as he led the crowd in prayer. “We’re going to move forward in unity and strength.”
Willis’s prayer was delivered to a crying crowd, mostly made up of the friends and classmates of the victims. More than 200 people surrounded the victims’ families to show their support.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Victoria Beach, a community leader and one of the hundreds who attended the vigil, said.
Beach worked as a community liaison with the Seattle Police Department (SPD) for nearly a decade. She told KIRO 7 she is sick of seeing young Black men lose their lives to violence and believes something needs to change.
“It happens, we move on, we have meetings just to have meetings, no solutions,” she said. “The patrols will pick up, then die down after it goes away until it happens again.”
SPD reports the teen victims were at the bus stop near Rainier Beach High School and South Shore PreK-8 when the shots were fired.
It happened just before 4:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon, less than 20 minutes after school let out.
SPD said the shooter ran away before investigators arrived. First responders tried to save the teens, but they died on the scene.
“Immediately, I thought of the parents,” Beach said. “Seeing your child laying out in the street dead? Horrific.”
For her, the first step to a solution is clear.
“We need police officers back in schools,” she said. “Whether you like it or not, we need them back.”
Investigators have not yet officially identified the victims or released any details about the suspect, who is still on the run. Anyone with information is asked to come forward.