Usually July is a great stretch of 31 days here in the Pacific Northwest. The sun scatters the region's notorious cloud cover, and Rain City residents forget what it's like to live under the dark, drizzly skies of winter. This year, July began beautifully with a not-too-hot streak of days leading up to a long Fourth of July weekend. The clouds even parted for the Lake Union and Elliot Bay fireworks displays.
Unfortunately the month's perfect start quickly disintegrated into a bloody, hot mess for the Greater Seattle area.
The mayhem kicked off 50 miles northeast of Seattle on July 11 along a gorgeous stretch of trail near Mount Pilchuck where a woman and her daughter, ages 56 and 27, were gunned down during a hike.
To add a bit of international pain to these rare wilderness homicides and make the news even tougher to follow, the Israeli army and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters started a vicious little war in the Middle East. Mainly civilians have been killed, and the vast majority have been Lebanese. The most recent atrocity happened on July 30 when 57 unarmed Lebanese civilians, including 37 children, were killed when an Israeli warplane targeted their high rise in the village of Qana where they were taking refuge.
Back home in the Puget Sound things truly became hellish when, six days after the Pinnacle Trail homicides, a young man took a knife and brutally murdered four members of the Milkin family, including two brothers ages 5 and 3. The suspected killer lived across the street and tried to cover up his act of sheer evil by tossing a lit match on the gasoline he poured throughout the Kirkland home's interior.
After the flames came the heat. Record temperatures settled over Seattle, and the murderous mayhem continued.
On July 20, another multiple homicide unfolded near the South End's southern boundary in Skyway when a driveway argument in front of a house switched from verbal sparring to a one-sided pistol fight that left three young people dead.
Then, with the end of this seemingly cursed month in sight, Naveed Haq forced his way into downtown's Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle with a large-caliber semiautomatic handgun, announced he was angry about the Iraq war and the United States' support of Israel's actions in Lebanon, and started shooting at random. When he was finally subdued, one woman was killed and five others were seriously injured.
The streak of death and mayhem has been both heart crushing and mind numbing, but by the time you're reading this, July 2006 will be a memory. I'm glad it's gone, and I look forward to seeing what August has in store for the Emerald City.
Fortunately, like July, the month has kicked off to a great start with the August 1 National Night Out Against Crime. The annual event encourages neighbors to host block parties in celebration of their communities. Meeting and mingling with the people who live near us tends to keep criminal activity in check. When you know your neighborhood well, you're better able to spot, and hopefully stop, crime.
Let's hope the positive connections fostered at the National Night Out Against Crime carry through to the end of the month, unlike July,
Drop Erik a line through the street or e-mail address listed below. He'd love to hear from you.
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