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One teenager died and another was seriously injured in a shooting in the Seattle Autonomous Zone.
A 16-year-old boy was fatally shot and died after being taken to the hospital. The other victim, 14, is in intensive care.
Initially known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (Chaz) and now called the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (Chop), the area was created amid protests over the murder of George Floyd.
Since it is part of a protest against police brutality, it is about self-control.
In a statement, Seattle Harborview Medical Center Hospital said one of the children was brought in a private vehicle at 03:15 local time, while the other was driven by the Fire Department medical team at 03:30 Monday.
“The shooting man who arrived in Harborview … at 03:30 from the Chop area on Capitol Hill in Seattle sadly died,” the statement added.
Although the site was initially occupied by hundreds of peaceful protesters, this is the fourth shooting within the limits of Chop in the past 10 days.
In the first shooting, which occurred in the early hours of June 20, a 19-year-old man named Horace Lorenzo Anderson was killed and a 33-year-old man was wounded.
A second shooting the following day left a 17-year-old boy injured, and another person was injured in a third shooting two days later.
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Chief Carmen Best accused protesters and residents of “not cooperating”
After the latest violence, city officials said they are considering dismantling Chop and reopening a police station in the area that was abandoned by officers when the area was established.
Chief Carmen Best of the Seattle Police Department said they had found a white Jeep “riddled with bullet holes” near one of the concrete barriers to Chop.
He also accused protesters and residents of “not cooperating with our requests for help,” and said the area was now “unsafe for anyone.”
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat who served as the United States Attorney under former President Barack Obama, has also faced calls to resign people from both sides of the political divide for her handling of the protests in the city. and Chop.
Last week, he said he would work with protesters to end the protest zone. However, the barricades are still standing.
How is it in the protest area?
According to local media, the area is largely peaceful during the day, with people lounging in the park as volunteers hand out free food.
It encompasses a six-block radius of the city’s fashionable art scene that has been gentrified in recent years.
Protesters planted a community garden and painted a large “Black Lives Matter” mural on the street.
But at night, the area is said to get tense as protesters march and armed vigilantes openly patrol the streets.
How did the protest zone arise?
The protests in Seattle in Washington state began in response to the death last month in police custody of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Protesters also refer to it as the Capitol Hill Busy Protest, or Chop
The area around the East Precinct in Seattle became a battleground between protesters and police earlier this month, prompting the governor to send the National Guard and mayor to impose the curfew.
The mayor finally ordered the barricades near the compound to be removed and the police building closed.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, had threatened to “take back” the city, but Mayor Durkan and Washington Governor Jay Inslee, both Democrats, told him to take care of his own affairs.
