Capitol Hill massacre

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The Capitol Hill massacre was a mass murder that occurred on the morning of Saturday, March 25, 2006, when 28-year-old Kyle Aaron Huff entered a rave afterparty in the southeast part of Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood and opened fire, killing six and wounding two. He then turned the gun on himself as he was being confronted by police on the front porch of 2112 E. Republican Street.

[edit] Timeline

Prior to the shooting, on the evening of Friday, March 24, 2006, a zombie-themed rave called "Better Off Undead" was held at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. CHAC states a maximum attendance of 350 throughout the evening and the promoters claim a maximum attendance of 500 people through the evening, with about 350 at the peak. By nearly all accounts, CHAC itself had excellent security at the rave (with over 20 security on staff), and the only connection of the massacre to the rave was that the perpetrator and the victims attended the rave, and that one of the victims invited the perpetrator to the afterparty.^{[1] [2]} At the event, Kyle Huff was invited to attend an afterparty at a home about a mile away. Sometime between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. on Saturday morning Huff left the event to attend the afterparty.

A last-minute invitee, Huff did not personally know anyone at the afterparty. He was quiet but spoke pleasantly with everyone as the afterparty progressed. One person says that they shared a bowl of marijuana. Nobody recalls him leaving, and there was no altercation or belligerent behavior exhibited by Huff.

Close to 7 a.m., Huff left the house and returned to his large truck, parked nearby. From the truck he retrieved a 12-gauge pistol-grip Winchester Defender shotgun and a .40-caliber semiautomatic Ruger handgun, and several bandoliers (over 300 rounds) worth of ammunition for the guns.^[3] On his way back to the afterparty, he spray-painted the word "NOW" on the sidewalk and on the steps of a neighboring home. Upon arrival, he shot two victims who were outside smoking, one on the steps, the other on the porch. He forced his way in through the front door of the house and shot five more people on the first floor. During the shooting Huff allegedly stated "There's plenty for everyone," or something similar. On the second floor, he fired through the locked door of a bathroom where a couple had taken refuge inside the bathtub; neither person was hit. At least three other victims were injured during the shooting and taken to Harborview Medical Center, and at least one died at the hospital.

The shooting inside the house lasted less than four minutes. A patrol officer nearby, Steve Leonard, heard the shots and headed to the scene, getting the address from multiple 911 dispatches. When he got to the house, he encountered an injured victim and immediately got between the victim and the house, as Huff was coming down the steps. Before the officer could complete his demand that Huff drop his weapon, Huff put the gun in his mouth and shot himself through the head. ^{[4] [5]}

Following the shooting police found that Huff's truck contained a Bushmaster XM15 E2S rifle,^[3] another handgun, several more boxes of ammunition, a baseball bat, and a machete. On Saturday afternoon the Seattle Police Department served a search warrant on the North Seattle apartment that Huff shared with his identical twin brother, Kane, where they found more guns and ammunition. During the search, Huff's brother returned home, unaware of what had happened. He was taken into custody, questioned, then later released.

On March 28, the Church Council of Greater Seattle, led by the Rev. Sanford Brown and other local clergy, held an interfaith prayer service^[6] at the site of the massacre. The service was attended by over 500 people.

[edit] Legacy

The Capitol Hill massacre was the worst mass killing in Seattle since the 1983 Wah Mee massacre in which 14 died.^[7] While Seattle and the Pacific Northwest in the past half-century have had numerous serial killers—most notoriously Ted Bundy, "Green River Killer" Gary Ridgway and Robert Lee Yates —mass murder is much rarer in the city and region.^[8]

In the wake of the killings, the Seattle Times, invoking the drugs and alcohol the victims apparently enjoyed that night, immediately suggested late-night activities of the underaged to be more regulated and called for the city's all-ages dance rules to be "thoroughly re-examined and re-tooled."^[9][10] This view was firmly opposed by alternative weekly The Stranger. Josh Feit and Stranger editor-in-chief Dan Savage wrote in response to the Times editorial:

Far from endangering kids, teen dances keep kids safe. If the young people hadn't been at a crowded public dance overseen by extensive security (19 guards were at CHAC on Saturday night) where no one got hurt, the kids would likely have been out at unchaperoned and completely unregulated house parties—not after the dance, but all night. And, without a fat calendar of all-ages events, that's where they would be every weekend. Because without organized all-ages dances and live-music events, house parties and parking lots are all kids have.^[2]

The views predominating among the city's politicians and other leaders turned out to be closer to those of The Stranger than the Times. As mayor Greg Nickels put it, "This is not about music, this is not about a party. This was about a guy who decided he was going to kill people and he had the firepower to do it." Several city council members spoke up against the "quick fix" mentality inherent in the Times editorial; council member Peter Steinbrueck added he was "really incredulous over young teenaged girls going out all night unsupervised and mixing with much older people," but didn't see that as an issue over the nature of the place where they had socialized. Sandra Williamson, mother of shooting victim Christopher "Deacon" Williamson, announced, "I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that those raves continue… That is what I am going to do for Chris." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer added that "even… former City Attorney Mark Sidran", whom they described as "Seattle's best-known defender of underage dance restrictions," said that "Some tragedies defy any sort of rational response in terms of regulation because they're completely irrational events you can't really predict or prevent." ^[1]

As it happens, the killings occurred only days before Mayor Nickels was to announce the city's support for the non-profit VERA project (which puts on all-ages punk/indie shows) moving into a new location at Seattle Center,^[11] so that at the time of the killings all-ages events were more than routinely on the minds of city leaders, and in a more than typically positive light. Four years earlier, Seattle repealed a rather extreme and limiting Teen Dance Ordinance (TDO), replacing it with the much more flexible All-ages Dance Ordinance (AADO).^[12] In the course of the exchanges in the wake of the murders, musician and activist Ben Shroeter wrote that the AADO made possible legitimate, well-run dances, instead of the sometimes very drug-ridden underground events that had illegally occurred in the TDO era. "The dangerous 'underground' rave has virtually disappeared in the Seattle area," wrote Shroeter. "I’d rather have my daughter at CHAC or VERA Project than in the beckoning custody of unregulated and lecherous slimeballs."^[13]

[edit] Victims

Jeremy Martin DJing

Dead

• Melissa Moore, 14^[14]
• Suzanne Thorne, 15^[15]
• Justin "Sushi" Schwartz, 22^{[16] [17]}
• Christopher "Deacon" Williamson, 21^{[18] [19] [20]}
• Jeremy Martin, 26^[21]
• Jason Travers, 32^[22]

Injured

• Kian Movasagi, 18 ^[23]
• Another unidentified teenage victim ^[24]

[edit] Perpetrator

Kyle Aaron Huff (September 22, 1977 – March 25, 2006) was the shooter in the morning massacre. Huff's motive remains unknown.

Huff claimed to have attended The Art Institute of Seattle and North Seattle Community College, although neither institution has records of him attending.

He had previously been arrested in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana, for destroying a public arts project and was charged with a felony. (He shot up a statue of a moose that was part of an installation called "Moose on the Loose.") He was described by residents there as a well-liked person with a minor history of delinquency. He moved to Seattle with his twin brother about five years before the shooting. He had little contact with police in Seattle, but was involved in a brawl at the Lobo Saloon in 2004.^[25]

The Seattle Police Department showed these images of the weapons found in the truck and a look-alike shotgun used in the shooting. The biohazard placard is because of the presence of blood on some of the items.

The weapons used were purchased legally at sporting goods stores in Kalispell, Montana.^[26] They were seized by the police in Whitefish after he pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor mischief charge in the moose incident. They were returned after he paid restitution and a fine. The original felony charge for destroying the art would have prohibited him from owning firearms.

Huff was not well known in Seattle's rave scene. Very few people in the scene knew him or interacted with him. On February 1, 2006, someone with the email address kylehuff23@hotmail.com asked on an internet message board run by local raver Groovinkim when the next rave was, because he'd never been to one.^[27]

A possible window into the killer's motives appeared nearly a month after the event. An apartment manager of a complex about a mile from Huff's residence called police about a possible bomb he found while inspecting dumpsters, although that bomb turned out to be just modeling clay and wires. In the investigation afterwards, police found a handwritten note in the dumpster apparently written by Huff. On June 6, the police released the letter, not yet authenticated, to the media.^[28] A week later, the Washington State Patrol's State Crime Lab concluded that it was "highly probable" that the letter was authentic. Arguments in favor of authenticity included the fact that the letter was written on stationery from the apartment complex where the Huff brothers lived, and matched several known samples of the killer's writing, according to crime lab experts.^[29] The Stranger earlier claimed that the handwriting on the letter appears the same as samples from a job application of Huff's that they have obtained.^[30]

The letter, dated two days before the killings, was quite specific in expressing the writer's anger at young ravers for their provocative lifestyle, particularly their sexual freedom, and said that the things they did and said were too disturbing for the writer to live with. It ended with the quote "Now, kids, Now", reminiscent of the letters "NOW" that Huff spray painted during the massacre.

In July 2006, an investigative panel released its findings to the public. In attempting to explain Huff's motivations, the panel suggested that a song by Nirvana called "I Want to Know Now", with a chorus refrain of "now, now, now, now" influenced Huff's spray painted message. ^[31]

[edit] External links

• Capitol Hill massacre: A timeline of events
• Ravers flock to Web for news
• Jeremy Martin memorial
• Seattle Memorial temple project
• A comprehensive feature about the events in The Stranger, a local Seattle paper
• Maureen O'Hagan and Christine Willmsen, House that once stood for fun now a darker blue, Seattle Times, April 10, 2006. A follow-up article three weeks afterwards about the people who lived in the house (five out of six survived).
• Sara Jean Green, 911 calls from in house, outside reflected horror of killing spree, Seattle Times, March 31, 2006. Includes links to audio of the 911 calls.
• James Alan Fox, Panel Report on the March 25, 2006 Capitol Hill Shooting. July 17, 2006.

[edit] References