A man warned thousands of people on TikTok that Seattle's massive Bite of Seattle festival had zero security screening — and was ignored. Twenty-four hours later, two gunmen opened fire in the crowd, killing three people and wounding four others, including a two-year-old boy.
The shooting erupted around 6 p.m. Sunday at the annual food festival near the Space Needle, which draws 350,000 guests over three days. Assistant Seattle Police Chief Tyrone Davis said the two suspects were shooting at each other. One is in custody; the other remains at large with no description released to the public.
The day before the bloodshed, a content creator who goes by "leebotracks" posted a TikTok video walking through the festival grounds. "No security, no pat down, no search to the bag," he said of the entry process. He directly addressed organizers: "Make it happen. Keep the people safe. You should not be able to just walk up into this festival with all these people, with all these vendors, with no security."
After the shooting, he posted again. "I tried to let everybody know how security was being handled," he said. "Nobody can say I didn't try to let people know. People really were bashing me in my comment sections on the previous videos."
Newsweek reported that it remains unclear what exact security measures were in place at the festival. Last year, organizers claimed a "strong record of security" after a vendor complained about a break-in — a telling standard, where property damage prompted reassurance but crowd screening apparently did not.
The casualties are staggering in their randomness. Two people died at the scene. A woman later died at Harborview Medical Center. Four others were hospitalized with gunshot wounds to the arm, leg, and abdomen. A two-year-old boy and a 39-year-old woman were among the wounded in stable condition, according to CBS News.
Mayor Katie Wilson initially told the public two suspects were in custody, then corrected herself hours later to say only one was detained — a discrepancy no outlet explained. Wilson called the shooting "an act of horrific violence." Governor Bob Ferguson offered prayers and said a state SWAT team was en route, a resource that might have been useful before three people died.
BBC and KRDO highlighted witnesses describing chaos — people scaling fences, sheltering inside the Space Needle gift shop, crouching behind merchandise shelves. Some initially thought the gunfire was fireworks. KRDO noted the shooting was one of at least 271 mass shootings in the U.S. this year, per the Gun Violence Archive.
None of the outlets pressed festival organizers or city officials on the specific security protocols — or lack thereof — for an event packing hundreds of thousands into an open urban campus. The ATF and FBI responded after the bodies fell. The question is who decided that was sufficient, and why a guy with a phone camera saw the danger they refused to acknowledge.
Three Americans are dead because someone decided screening crowds wasn't worth the trouble. That someone has yet to be named.
