Two people were killed and five others were injured in a shooting at Seattle Center Sunday night as the civic center complex hosted a major food festival.
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Multiple people were injured Sunday evening as gunfire erupted at Seattle Center, a gathering place for cultural and arts events that was hosting a major food festival over the weekend, police said.
Seattle Police did not indicate the conditions of any of the people struck by gunfire, nor did it provide any information about a shooter.
Speaking on X, the Seattle department stated, “multiple shooting victims.†It asked members of the public to stay away as detectives and officers try to determine what happened.
A spokesperson for the University of Washington's Harborview Medical Center, the region's highest-level trauma center, said it expects to receive patients from the shooting. The spokesperson did not yet have the number of patients or their conditions.
The Bite of Seattle food festival was wrapping up its annual event Sunday, the final of its three days. It wasn't clear whether the event was involved in the shooting. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Esten Wakonabo was waiting in line with his girlfriend for a photo booth when people around them started running furiously, he told NBC affiliate KING TV of Seattle.
“It was a stampede,†he said.
Not long afterward, Wakonabo said, he noticed people on the ground, some with obvious gunshot wounds.
“There's bodies everywhere,†he said of those on the ground who appeared to be injured. “I mean, I counted eight.â€
Paul Skinner was helping to operate a Bite of Seattle booth that serves food from a food truck named Crave when chaos erupted, he said.
“We just heard what at first sounded like firecrackers, but it's just a little too crowded for that kind of thing,†he told KING. “So then, when the crowd started moving quickly in herds, you knew it was something was happening.â€
He added, “We all got down and took cover.â€
The civic center complex that grew into the Seattle Center included core structures erected for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, including the Coliseum, the Seattle Center Monorail and the Space Needle.
