2 public suicides at Seattle Center called unusual

Seattle Center officials say two recent suicides in the Center House are unfortunate, but they concede there's little they can do to prevent such a thing from happening again.

Counselors have been made available to Seattle Center employees who may have witnessed the most recent suicide, which occurred Friday when an 84-year-old homeless man shot himself at the end of an evening jazz performance. The King County Medical Examiner's Office on Monday identified the man as Forest David Howe.

According to a police report, Howe took his life while sitting in a chair next to the Christmas tree inside the Center House. Though death investigators were able to notify Howe's next of kin, they could not determine where he last lived, a death investigator said.

The shooting occurred about 9 p.m. at the end of a Winterfest Festival event called Seattle's Best Jazz, said Seattle Center spokesman Perry Cooper. Most people had already filed out when Howe shot himself, he said.

According to Seattle police, someone called 911 at 9:14 p.m. Officers responded and found Howe slumped over in a chair, a five-shot revolver at his feet.

Public suicides are extremely rare and to have two committed in the same location is even more unusual, according to a Seattle psychiatrist.

On Nov. 5, Terry Barlow, 44, cut his throat with a razor blade during a Hmong New Year celebration in the Center House. Though security guards, staff members and other bystanders wrestled the blade away from Barlow, he died 40 minutes later at Harborview Medical Center.

The suicides are the first at Seattle Center in the venue's 45-year history, said Cooper.

"We've never had this kind of thing happen before," Cooper said. "It could've happened anywhere and unfortunately, it just happened to be us."

Seattle Center is a public venue "and we can't restrict people who come in," he said.

Employees who either witnessed the suicide or its aftermath have been given time off "to talk to some professionals" about the incident, Cooper said.

Security officers are also being instructed to keep watch for anything suspicious in the hopes of heading off anyone who might consider doing something similar, he said.

Women in Black, a local activist group that holds vigils any time a homeless person dies outdoors, is violently killed or commits suicide, says its list of homeless deaths is longer than it's ever been since it began keeping track in 2000.

So far this year, either 46 or 48 homeless people have died on the streets, up from 35 in 2004, said group member Deanna Davis. Last year, three homeless people committed suicide. Counting Howe's suicide, this year's tally has tripled to nine, Davis said.

At the time of his death, Barlow was a couple days away from receiving subsidized housing, Davis said. "I guess he couldn't hang on any longer," she added.

According to psychiatrist Dr. Christos Dagadakis, the medical director of crisis intervention at Harborview's mental-health center, suicide is most often a solitary act.

It is atypical, he said, for people to kill themselves so publicly.

People who kill themselves by jumping from buildings, bridges or highway overpasses are using those places as "readily available vehicles" to end their lives, he said. In those cases, it is more about the method than it is location.

"This kind of public suicide is just really unusual," he said of the Seattle Center deaths.

Dagadakis raised the possibility that Howe's suicide may have been the act of a "copycat" who got the idea to kill himself at Center House after Barlow's death was reported by local media.

Even if Howe didn't copy Barlow's example, "this really is extraordinary — people doing it in public and at the same place," he said.

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