Tag Archives: stabbing

Crime, News

After Stabbing, Belltown Bar Puts Private Security on Foot Patrol

(Image: Central Protection website)

Belltown boulevardier Ronald Holden tips us that armed, private security guards will be patrolling First Avenue in Seattle, the three blocks from Battery to Lenora, after a recent fatal stabbing. “Seattle’s 25th homicide victim this year is identified,” reported the Seattle Times, noting that the victim, 21-year-old Faustino Cervantes was stabbed in the stomach after getting into a dispute with four men outside Tia Lou‘s.

Ironically, the up-to-6-man security detail is courtesy of the unsettled owners of Sarajevo Lounge, where you can get such Bosnian favorites as cevapi and roasted lamb. Except for that fatal stabbing, and the fact you need to be more specific than “Belltown” and “shooting” when searching for the latest area incident, an observer might think that Sarajevo Lounge’s Dino Stalina and Denis Kurdija have hit upon a way to publicize their security company Central Protection.

But the two told KCPQ News that it’s their restaurant business that they’re worried about. Belltown’s sporadic violence and open-air drug deals are keeping customers away. Belltown businesses have long cried out for police foot patrols–earlier this year, after 22 homicides, the city established a few “hot spot” beats for foot patrol officers. But those are constrained by the need to fit into existing SPD budgets.

Stalina and Kurdija hope that the sight of uniformed men with guns will be enough to make hoodlums think twice; Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb told KCPQ that the security guards would be “working with” the police department, acting as “eyes and ears.” Stalina and Kurdija have plans to create a “black list,” shared among Belltown nightspots, to keep troublemakers out, and imagine that, with collective financial support, security details could be on call to walk people to their cars.

Still, their guards will be armed, and given Belltown’s history, it’s likely that one night they’ll confront someone who’s also carrying a gun. In a corollary to Russian playwright Chekhov’s dictum, any gun you see in the first act can be expected to go off by the third.

Crime, News

This Summer, Don’t Miss Third Avenue’s Improv Knife Skills Workshops

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(Photo: MvB)

Seattle is many things, but this August, it also seems like a great place to get stabbed as you go about your business on a notorious stretch of street downtown. SeattleCrime.com characterizes the latest incident as “Yet Another Stabbing At 3rd & Pine.”

Sunday afternoon, a man was arrested for stabbing, “without provocation,” another man who was taking the bus with his mother and the rest of his family. The Seattle Police Blotter describes the proceedings:

For reasons unknown, the suspect instigated an altercation with the victim as he was trying to exit the bus. The bus doors opened and the victim and suspect exited the bus at which time the physical altercation between them continued on the sidewalk. Just north of 3rd Avenue and Pine Street the suspect pulled out a knife and stabbed the victim at least twice before fleeing the scene on foot.

The 38-year-old stabber actually cut himself on the 3.5-inch folding knife he was using, and had to be taken to the hospital before jail; the wounds he delivered to the victim were described an “non-life-threatening.”

On the 17th, a man walking down Third Avenue was bumped into…well, here’s the Seattle Police Blotter once more:

Preliminary investigation indicates that the male victim was walking southbound on the west side of the 1600 block of 3rd Avenue when an unknown adult male suspect bumped into him.  The victim thought nothing of the contact until a few moments later when he realized that he had been stabbed.

We are to be on the look-out for a “white male in his 30s wearing a black leather jacket, black pants, and black boots.”

On July 30th, there was a stabbing and robbery at, of course, Third & Battery. A man withdrawing money from an ATM told police someone had come up behind him, stabbed him in the back, and taken the money he was withdrawing. (A 68-year-old man was also robbed at Third & Cedar, but as he was beaten to the ground by four or five men in their 20s, he’s outside the scope of this knife-centric post.)

Detail from SeattleCrime.com's Google Map of criminal activiities

To judge from last year on SeattleCrime.com–“More Details on That 3rd & Pine Stabbing“–Seattle police have not made all that much headway in Third Avenue safety in the intervening time. In fact, anyone who spends time downtown will likely tell visitors to avoid Third, so we will, too.

March over to 600 Fourth Avenue, instead, and ask the residents why the events a block distant have attracted so little of their time, while they are busy discussing a “Tourism Improvement Area” and seem to find “aggressive canvassing” such a pressing issue.