Detectives with the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office Major Crimes Unit are investigating a fatal shooting in the Clearview area of unincorporated Snohomish, Washington, after deputies found two 21-year-old men with gunshot wounds in the early hours of Sunday, November 1, the sheriff's office said.

Source: My Everett News (Snohomish County Sheriff's Office statement)

Deputies responded at approximately 2 a.m. on Sunday to reports of a shooting in the 6100 block of 172nd Street SE, a residential street in the Clearview area south of the city of Snohomish. On arrival they located the two men, both aged 21, suffering from gunshot wounds.

Both men were transported by aid crews to Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett. One of the men later died at the hospital. The second man sustained non-life-threatening injuries, according to the sheriff's office account carried by My Everett News and by KIRO 7 News in Seattle.

Source: KIRO 7 News Seattle

No arrests have been made. Detectives say it is not yet known whether the shooter and the two men knew each other, and they are still working to establish the circumstances that led up to the shooting. The sheriff's office said detectives do not believe there is any ongoing danger to the public.

A quiet residential area along the Route 9 corridor

Clearview is an unincorporated community in southern Snohomish County, built around the State Route 9 corridor and residential streets such as 172nd Street SE and 176th Street SE, between the cities of Snohomish, Everett and Bothell. It is a largely residential, heavily treed area of family homes — the kind of street where an early-hours shooting draws a major detective response precisely because it is so unusual.

The case is being handled by the Sheriff's Office Major Crimes Unit, the detective team that investigates homicides and other major felonies in unincorporated Snohomish County. In cases of this kind, detectives process the scene, canvass neighbours for witnesses and camera footage, and interview the surviving victim when doctors allow it; the sheriff's office has said its detectives are continuing exactly that work.

Name and cause of death still to come from the Medical Examiner

The dead man's name has not been released. The sheriff's office said positive identification, as well as the official cause and manner of death, will be determined by the Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office — the standard step that must happen before a victim in a Washington homicide investigation is publicly identified.

Snohomish County — Everett, Lynnwood, Marysville and the communities around them — is home to a growing Punjabi and Sikh community within the wider Seattle and Puget Sound region, and many of its families live in the same unincorporated subdivisions patrolled by the sheriff's office. Gun violence on a quiet residential street in the early hours is the kind of incident that unsettles the whole neighbourhood, and residents can expect further updates from the sheriff's office as the Major Crimes investigation develops.