Seattle authorities cleared out a homeless encampment from a park earlier this week, only for the homeless to return within less than a day.
Rotary Viewpoint Park in the western part of the city was cleared Wednesday. By Thursday, tents had already been reerected, people were committing substance abuse openly, and personal belongings were piling up on the sidewalk, according to KIRO-FM.
“We wanted homelessness to be solved, so we have thrown tax dollars at it, and nothing substantial has come out of it,” Iris Hicks, who lives near the park, told KIRO-FM.
During the initial cleanup, the city removed 2.5 tons of trash and “connected five people with shelter and one with case management services,” city officials told the West Seattle Blog.
The city’s Unified Care Team told KOMO-TV that prior to the clearing of the encampment, “the site was identified due to ongoing concerns, including trash accumulation, environmental conditions and broader community impacts.”
The Seattle Police Department is still looking for the suspects who injured three victims, ages 28, 39 and 42, at the encampment on March 29.
The police said that “multiple suspects went to the victims’ tent and deployed a fire extinguisher inside” and that, when the victims ran out, the suspects “struck the victims in the heads using improvised weapons, reportedly a crowbar, the fire extinguisher and a wrench.”
Two of the victims were knocked unconscious, while the third got away despite suffering a laceration. The suspects robbed the victims and fled. Two of the victims ended up in the hospital with critical injuries, police said, though they did not specify whether those two were the same two who were knocked unconscious.
The other victim was also hospitalized, police said, but their condition became stable by the end of the day of the attack.
Ethan, a homeless person at the encampment, told KOMO-TV as it was being cleared that “it was really messed up. They definitely didn’t deserve what happened. Some people just didn’t like the way they were talked to, basically, and so they decided they were going to try to kill them.”
