14-year-old hit, killed by Seattle Monorail while spray-painting building

SEATTLE — A 14-year-old boy who was spray-painting a building was hit and killed by the Seattle Center Monorail Sunday night.

Seattle Police said it happened shortly before 9 p.m. near Fifth Avenue and Denny Way. The boy had climbed onto the roof of a building.

Surveillance video reviewed by the Seattle Police Department shows the boy was spray-painting graffiti on a building next to the tracks before he was hit.

We believe this is the first time anyone has been hit and killed by the train, although there have been at least a few other high-profile incidents involving the Monorail in the past.

The Monorail opened on Mar. 24, 1962, and the only death we could find was when a maintenance worker was killed while making repairs in the 1970s.

In 1971, 27 people were hurt after the train slammed into a steel girder. More recently in 2004, a train caught fire after an electrical wire in the motor reportedly shorted.

We’ve reached out to the Seattle Center for more details on this latest incident. Police revealed the age of the suspect early Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, city officials considered prosecuting people arrested for graffiti, but in mid-June, U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman ruled that the city could not enforce property crimes related to graffiti, because, as it’s currently written, the law “poses a real threat to censorship.”

The ruling only applies to graffiti and not property destruction.

Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison filed an appeal on June 30.

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