Shooting suspect kills himself in Ballard parking lot

A 70-year-old Arizona man died yesterday morning from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, less than 24 hours after he is suspected of arriving in Seattle and shooting his daughter's boyfriend.

The man had been in phone contact with Seattle police off and on since the Monday afternoon shooting in a driveway in the Blue Ridge neighborhood of North Seattle, said police spokesman Sean Whitcomb.

The 32-year-old victim was conscious when police arrived around 3 p.m. and was able to tell officers that his girlfriend's father was the person who had shot him twice in the chest, he said.

The wounded man was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where his condition was upgraded from serious to satisfactory yesterday.

The 70-year-old man's name has not been released.

The man had told police around 11:30 a.m. yesterday that he had parked his car along a side street near the Fred Meyer store in Ballard, Whitcomb said. At 11:39 a.m., as members of the police SWAT team were arriving, officers heard a single gunshot and found the man dead in the back seat of his car.

"We'd been looking for this individual all through the night and this morning," Whitcomb said, adding that police lost contact with the man around 7 p.m. Monday. Whitcomb couldn't say what may have prompted the man to shoot his daughter's boyfriend.

Yesterday morning, the man's daughter called police after spotting her father's car near her Capitol Hill apartment, Whitcomb said. The man was last seen driving west on Olive Way at 8:45 a.m.

At 8:55 a.m., police were able to contact him on his cellphone and "maintained phone contact with him throughout the morning," Whitcomb said. The man was apparently emotionally distressed and asked to speak to a police hostage negotiator, he said.

Negotiators tried to persuade him to park his car and peacefully surrender and the man directed officers to his location, on the west side of the Fred Meyer parking lot, Whitcomb said.

Eddie Grandpre, who works at an appliance warehouse adjacent to the street where the man shot himself, was walking to the Fred Meyer store for lunch when he heard a loud "pop."

"It was pretty nuts, especially when I was right there, in the open and in the middle of everything," said Grandpre, 21. "I saw the cops and they were telling me to run, so I just got out of there."

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com