White Center shooting victim says he survived by ‘grace of God’

WHITE CENTER, Wash. — One of the four men shot outside a White Center café is speaking out. Three of the victims are relatives of a 19-year-old man killed at CHOP last June. The shooting outside the Taradise Café in White Center Friday left two men dead, two men injured.

The injured are the father and uncle of Horace Anderson Junior killed last year outside the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest or CHOP zone.

Horace Anderson says he is struggling with what happened in White Center.

The shooting left him injured, his cousin dead, and his 43-year-old brother fighting for his life here at Harborview.

Yet with all of it, he says he is grateful to be alive.

“My son’s passing and now this happens, you know, and then I’m shot,” said Anderson.

That is how Anderson describes his reaction to a shooting in this parking lot in White Center just before 4 o’clock Friday afternoon. The violent encounter claimed the lives of his cousin and another man; critically injuring his brother, hurting him, too.

“Here it is almost a year since my son passed and through the grace of God, I’m still sitting here,” said Anderson. “I got shot twice in the face. Really, it’s a miracle. It’s a blessing. But man, it’s just uncalled for. It’s too much gun violence.”

KIRO 7 first met Anderson, just days after his 19-year-old son and namesake was shot and killed at the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone or CHOP. Even now, nearly one full year later, no one has been arrested for his son’s murder.

He says he and his family members were at the Taradise Café Friday to pay their respects to the family of a friend who had died.

“My cousin, he was in the car with me,” said Anderson. “My brother was in his own car. We were leaving and gunfire reacted, you now. Right now my family has to (be) mourning again for my cousin now.”

Anderson said he does not know who opened fire on them. And he declined to say more about the shooting so as not to interfere with the King County sheriff’s investigation. But he does say he is now afraid for his life. Afraid, too, for the lives of his family members.

“Something has to be done you know,” he said. “I want the law to start taking things into their hands and start doing what they’re supposed to do and make sure to keep the streets safe for everybody.”

His injuries will prevent Anderson from working. So now a close ally has set up a go-fund-me account to help him and his family move out of the area, perhaps out of the state. They believe that may be the only way he will survive.

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