Rainer Beach Shooting Updates

Both victims of last Friday's shooting at a bus stop near Rainier Beach High School and South Shore PK-8 have been identified. 

One is Traveiah Housemuse, 17, and the other is Tyjon Stewart, 18. Both were students at RBHS. SPD has classified both deaths as homicides. The Seattle Times reports that on Monday, Feb. 2nd:

After school, students, staff and community members, including the district’s new superintendent, Ben Shuldiner, and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, gathered to honor the students at the bus stop. 

From that article on the bus stop vigil:

Jeremiah Ntoco, a 17-year-old sophomore at Rainier Beach High, said he felt stressed and unsafe coming to school Monday. Ntoco said he was friends with one of the students who was killed. 

Seeing more security guards on campus, and police officers passing by the school every few days, would help him feel safer, he said. 

It is unclear to me what the status is of SPD drive-bys at SPS high schools during the weekday. I plan to ask about that.  

O’Hara Jimenez, a parent of a student at Rainier Beach High School, said she knew her daughter would be well supported by the school’s staff. But she hopes more can be done to make the surrounding area, including nearby vacant commercial lots, safer. 

Something for Schuldiner to talk to Mayor Wilson about when they have an actual meeting.  

“I could only think about the tragedy that befell on the community; but even within the tragedy there is hope,” Shuldiner said at the news conference. “As the rain falls, which they tell me happens quite often here, I could imagine it mixing with the tears that our children and our families cried both on Friday and throughout the weekend.”

“I’m mourning for the families, mourning for the community,” Shuldiner said after the news conference. “But I also think that what I’ve seen is this wonderful spirit of Seattle coming together and trying to make this right. Hopefully this event will be the watershed moment. Hopefully this is going to be the day where we start to take action and we start to make changes to increase safety and security.”

Shuldiner pointed to “gold standard” safety measures the district can work on implementing at every school, including single point of entry entrances, fencing, cameras and maintaining a good relationship with the Seattle Police Department to ensure streets near campus are safe for students. 

Great to hear these ideas from him.  

After the news conference, he added that it’s important for teachers and staff to have strong relationships with the “most at-risk kids so that they feel like they can trust the adult to tell them what’s going on … We as a school district should be the ones to know, as well as the families. We need to have close relationships with our parents, with our family members, and then we also have to make sure that we are giving support to kids so they’re not making these decisions to sadly be targeted.”

I wonder if that last sentence is alluding to gangs. Several readers - in other posts here - have stated that there are gang issues that need to be addressed. I do agree with the Superintendent about relationships being very important to keeping students safe.  

The Seattle Police Department has asked anyone with information to contact the department’s tip line at 206-233-5000.