A woman is dead and a man is gravely wounded after a shooting early Friday evening, November 6, on University Way Northeast in Seattle's University District, the commercial strip known to generations of students simply as “the Ave.” Seattle police say detectives believe the man shot the woman and then shot himself, and the department's homicide unit is now investigating what officers on the scene described through the university's alert system as a possible domestic violence murder and attempted suicide.

Source: Seattle Police Department (SPD Blotter)

Police were dispatched just before 7 p.m. to a report of a shooting in the 4500 block of University Way NE, Sergeant Patrick Michaud of the Seattle Police Department wrote in the department's official blotter post, published at 9:40 p.m. Friday. Officers arriving at the scene found a woman with a suspected gunshot wound, and she was pronounced deceased at the scene. Nearby, in the street, officers found a man with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Detectives believe that man is the suspect who shot the woman, the department said.

Medics took the wounded man to Harborview Medical Center, Seattle's regional trauma hospital, but police said Friday night that he was not expected to survive his wounds. KIRO 7 reported that the woman who was killed was 25 years old. As of the police department's Friday-night statement, neither the woman nor the man had been publicly identified; in Seattle, the King County Medical Examiner's Office formally identifies homicide victims once family notification is complete.

Source: KIRO 7 Seattle

How the evening unfolded

The University of Washington's emergency alert blog shows how fast the situation moved. At 7:06 p.m. the university told its community that Seattle police were responding to a law-enforcement emergency in the 4500 block of University Way and asked people to avoid the area, adding that police believed there was no threat to the public. Two minutes later, at 7:08 p.m., the alert carried the police description of the case: detectives were investigating a possible domestic violence murder and attempted suicide, and police were not searching for any additional suspects. By 8:12 p.m., police had secured the scene.

Source: UW Alert Blog, University of Washington

“Detectives are investigating after a man shot and killed a woman and then shot himself in the University District early Friday evening,” the police blotter said. The department added the two points it repeats in cases like this one: the homicide unit is investigating, and police do not believe there are any outstanding suspects or any risk to the public. FOX 13 Seattle and KING 5 also reported the shooting Friday night, describing a woman killed and a man hospitalised with a self-inflicted wound near the university.

Neither person was part of the university

Because the shooting happened a short walk from campus, on the street that feeds and houses much of student Seattle, the University of Washington moved quickly to answer the question every parent and student was asking. In its 8:12 p.m. update, the university stated plainly: “Neither the victim nor the suspect is affiliated with the University of Washington.” That clarification matters locally — the U-District is home not only to UW students but to thousands of immigrant and working families, including a significant South Asian and Punjabi community across the wider Seattle area, for whom University Way is a routine shopping and dining street.

University Way NE — the Ave — runs north from the university campus through the University District, a dense grid of restaurants, bookstores, small shops and apartments. A shooting at the dinner hour, on a Friday, in the 4500 block placed this case in one of the most heavily walked parts of the neighbourhood, which is why both the police response and the university's alerts were so visible, and why detectives closed in around a single block rather than searching a wider area: from the first alert, police said they were not looking for anyone else.

What investigators will do next

The case now sits with the Seattle Police Department's homicide unit. The standard next steps in a King County homicide investigation are the medical examiner's formal identification of the woman and ruling on cause and manner of death, an update on the wounded man's condition at Harborview — which will decide whether he survives to face the case or whether this becomes a double fatality — and detectives' work to establish the relationship between the two people and what led to the shooting. Police had not announced any such findings as of Friday night, and no motive has been publicly stated.

For the University District, Friday's shooting is the kind of case that travels fast through a campus community even when, as the university has confirmed, neither person belonged to it. Police are asking anyone with information about the incident to contact the Seattle Police Department. Awaaz Punjab will update this story when the medical examiner releases the woman's identity or police issue a further statement.