300 gather at Garfield High after teen slain

Liz Bottman and Erica Jonlin stood on the steps at the front entrance to Seattle's Garfield High School wondering exactly where a 15-year-old boy was found gunned down Friday night. Both are mothers of 15-year-old sons — sophomores at Garfield — and both are active in Garfield's Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA).

"We're here looking for answers and solutions," said Bottman, the PTSA secretary, who on Wednesday night recorded minutes of a meeting called by the PTSA and the Garfield Black Parents Association to address the recent increase in violence and security issues around the school.

The two mothers were among about 300 people, including parents, school district administrators and board members and city officials, who attended the meeting Wednesday night at Garfield.

The meeting followed the death of 15-year-old Quincy Coleman, the fifth teenager killed in Seattle this year. Coleman died of multiple gunshot wounds on the steps behind Garfield High School, near 25th Avenue and East Jefferson Street. Police said the death was not school-related.

"There is a level of community violence among young people that has been consistent over the last four to five years, despite a 40-year lull in overall crime in the city," said James Kelly, president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle.

Seattle Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson called the issue of youth-on-youth violence a citywide problem.

"This is not just a Garfield High School issue. It's a community issue; it's a citywide issue," she said. "We need community programs" to address the issue, she said.

Nonetheless, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels promised security improvements at and near Garfield. He said that improved lighting would be installed around the school by this weekend and that security cameras would be installed next week near the Teen Life Center next to the school.

Nickels has also proposed a $9 million initiative to prevent youth violence. The proposal is scheduled to be discussed by the Seattle City Council on Friday.

Another 15-year-old boy was injured in the Friday night shooting, but he managed to reach the Teen Life Center and was transported to Harborview Medical Center. Seattle police said the surviving teen has not cooperated with police and that no arrests have been made.

Gang-unit detectives were among those investigating the shootings, although police have not officially declared it a gang-related killing.

Several people who paid respects to Coleman at the site of his death in the days after his slaying said that the shooting was understood among street-tough teens to be based on gang rivalries.

In a blog on Monday, City Councilman Tim Burgess said that the most recent death highlights the city's gang problem, and its need to launch a program to combat youth violence.

"We need to acknowledge — publicly, out loud — that we have a serious gang crisis in our city," Burgess wrote.

According to some parents of Garfield students and area residents, there has been a rash of assaults and thefts in the neighborhood since the school reopened this fall after a two-year renovation.

Just Wednesday afternoon, police were called to the school to respond to a melee involving more than 20 youths and some adults outside the school, said Garfield Principal Ted Howard Jr. Such incidents, not all of which have been confirmed by police, had been the subject of discussion last month at an East Precinct Crime Prevention Coalition. Garfield is in the East Precinct.

Stephanie Tschida, coalition chairwoman, has said that assaults and thefts near the school tend to go "up and down," but lately, there has been a "pattern of kids who live in the neighborhood picking on students who do not."

Several teenagers and young men who gathered at the school on Monday said that the people who live "on the streets" see their neighborhoods as their territory, and they will fight those they see as outsiders.

One young man, who said he was a friend of Coleman's but declined to give his name, said the shooting was understood to be about "territory and colors."

He said that he would not think of being out, even in his own neighborhood, without a gun at night.

Youth clashes have long been a problem near the school, Howard said. "You just have a bunch of kids who are having issues, and this is a gathering place," he said.

At the meeting, Nickels assured parents more police officers would be assigned to patrol the area around the school.

Teresa Thomas, a Northeast Seattle parent of a 15-year-old son who is a freshman at Garfield, said she attended the meeting at the urging of her son, who feared a looming gang war or retaliation for Friday night's slaying.

"I'm happy to see that there's going to be increased police security," she said. "We don't need another child to die."

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com.

Charles Brown: 206-464-2206 or cbrown@seattletimes.com