Seattle police were investigating two homicides that took place in different parts of the city on Friday night.
The first, a stabbing in the lobby of an apartment building in Belltown, was the culmination of an escalating argument, police said. Officers arrived around 5 p.m. and found a man suffering from a major wound. They were unable to save him, according to a Seattle Police Department news release. Police say they have identified a suspect, but haven’t publicly released a name and haven’t made any arrests.
At about 9:30 p.m., Seattle police responding to a reported overdose in the Columbia City neighborhood found a 54-year-old man unconscious on a sidewalk in the 2700 block of Hanford Street South, on the northern edge of the neighborhood.
Police quickly determined the victim showed signs of trauma from an unknown weapon, according to Seattle police spokesperson Detective Judinna Gulpan. The man died at the scene from his injuries.
The Seattle Police Department’s homicide unit was working to determine the circumstances that led to the man’s death, according to a news release.
No suspect information has been released, and the King County Medical Examiner has not yet identified the man who died.
The killings bring Seattle’s total number of 2023 homicides so far to 57 — a figure that has already surpassed the city’s 2022 tally of such violent deaths, according to a Seattle Times database compiled with preliminary information from police, prosecutors and the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Seattle police investigated 33 homicides in 2019, 53 in 2020, 41 in 2021 and 54 in 2022, according to The Times’ data. With more than three months left in the year, it’s conceivable the city could break its 1994 record of 69 homicides in a single year.
Fifty-seven homicides have also been committed elsewhere in King County this year, according to The Times’ data. The county’s 114 killings are only five deaths shy of the 119 homicides investigated in both 2021 and 2022.
Seattle Times staff reporter Sara Jean Green contributed to this story.