SEATTLE — One person was hospitalized this afternoon after a stabbing in Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood forced store employees to lock themselves into the back of their store and hide.
911 dispatchers first received reports of the stabbing inside a business at 2:39 p.m. on December 23.
When Seattle Police Department officers arrived, they found a 37-year-old man outside the business suffering from a stab wound to the chest. The man was taken to Harborview Medical Center in serious but stable condition, with non-life-threatening injuries.
According to police, officers then entered the store and found a 57-year-old man ‘attempting to make entry’ into a storage room that employees had locked themselves in for safety. Officers quickly took the suspect into custody without incident.
A witness told police that the 57-year-old suspect had entered the store and appeared to be in crisis before the stabbing victim entered the store just a short time later. There was a brief, non-confrontational conversation between the two before the suspect pulled a knife from his jacket and stabbed the victim in the chest. The victim ran from the store to escape the suspect, and the suspect remained inside, where he was later taken into custody by SPD.
The suspect was arrested and booked into King County Jail for investigation of assault.