Shooting victim was former Franklin High basketball player

A former Franklin High School basketball player was the latest victim of youth violence in Seattle after he was shot in the face outside the Garfield Community Center Tuesday evening.

The victim was identified this morning as Donnie P. Cheatham, according to a spokeswoman at Harborview Medical Center. She gave no information on his condition, but a Seattle police spokeswoman said he was in critical condition Tuesday night at the hospital.

Police said he is 21 years old.

Franklin basketball coach Jason Kerr said today that he went to Harborview Tuesday night to be with Cheatham.

"Obviously, I am very concerned about the young man," said Kerr, who was reached in Las Vegas while en route with his team for a tournament in Louisville, Ken.

Cheatham, as a senior, played on the Franklin team that won the state 4A boys basketball championship in 2006.

Kerr said he didn't want to comment on Cheatham's condition or his background, saying that was up to Cheatham's family.

Kerr said a Franklin coach was left behind in Seattle to stay with Cheatham and his family.

Peyton Siva, 18, a Franklin senior who plays on the school's basketball team and was Cheatham's teammate in 2006, said Kerr notified the team on Tuesday night that Cheatham had been shot. Kerr spoke to the team after its game with Nathan Hale, Siva said.

"He broke down crying and told us about what happened to Donnie," Siva said.

Siva said the shooting left him shaken. "I was sad the whole night," he said.

According to police spokeswoman Renee Witt, a group of young men were outside the community center on the east side of the grounds at about 7 p.m. when they were approached by another group of young men.

Words were exchanged and the victim was shot in the face. The victim and two other young men ran inside the community center, where the victim collapsed. He was treated at the scene before being taken to the Harborview Medical Center, just over a mile away.

The second group — up to four males — ran from the community-center property in different directions, Witt said. The two who entered the community center with the victim left the scene, too, Witt said. "They didn't stick around."

Seattle police say that while gang-unit detectives are investigating the shooting, they cannot say for certain whether the crime is gang-related in the absence of a suspect or a motive.

"In the big picture, does it really matter?" said police spokesman Mark Jamieson. "The end result is the same. A young person has been shot and there are kids with access to guns who believe that's the way to settle disputes."

Siva, who lives near Cheatham and sees him regularly, said he knew of no gang activity on Cheatham's part and described Cheatham as a regular attendee at the church both attend.

A friend of Cheatham's family, Vivien McGinty, said the young man "has a loving extended family that tried to rescue him from the streets."

Within an hour of the shooting, community residents were holding glowing candles in sub-freezing temperatures at the scene in the Central Area near 23rd Avenue and East Cherry Street to disavow the street violence that has taken the lives of so many young people.

"What better place for us to be than right here?" said Liz Ali, a co-founder of Mothers Outreach Movement (MOM), a group that includes mothers who have lost children this year to street violence.

Since January, six young men and boys between the ages of 14 and 18 have been shot to death in King County. Some of the slayings remain unsolved. Most recently, 16-year-old Daiquan Jones was killed on Nov. 22 at Westfield Southcenter mall in Tukwila. The alleged shooter in that case, Barry Saunders, was arrested in Portland and faces a second-degree-murder charge. And less than two months ago, on Halloween night, 15-year-old Quincy Coleman was fatally wounded by gunfire also outside Garfield Community Center. Police found him shot in the stomach.

According to King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, youth violence is at its highest level in two decades.

Ali, of MOM, said a group of about 20 of her members and supporters were holding a candlelight vigil at Rainier Avenue South and South Alaska Street, less than five miles south of the shooting scene, when a passerby in a vehicle told them about the shooting.

"We all jumped in our cars and came straight here," she said, standing in front of the Garfield center.

"This is part of our strategy," said another member of the MOM group, Dione Tyson, also of Seattle. "Being at the scene of the crime to support the family."

Police spokeswoman Witt said it was too early to say whether Tuesday night's shooting was gang-related.

Police chiefs met earlier

The growing concern over the problem of youth-on-youth violence was the topic earlier Tuesday of a gathering of police chiefs from across the region. They spoke out together against the culture of youth, gang and gun violence that has claimed so many lives this year and shows no signs of abating.

Members of the King County Police Chiefs Association — who meet regularly to talk about issues in their jurisdictions — acknowledged youth violence is a problem and pledged their best efforts and resources to combat it.

"We have 15-year-old kids killing each other, and we have to pull out all the stops," said King County Sheriff Sue Rahr.

Brian Wilson, chief of the Federal Way Police Department and chair of the chiefs' association, said few of the strategies being used now are new. For example, he said, investigators with local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies have been sharing information for some time now.

However, in light of the recent uptick in youth violence, police leaders are publicizing their efforts.

"We're formalizing what outstanding detectives have done for years," Wilson said. The focus, he said, is on "coordination, collaboration and shared information."

Among the things police officials said they routinely do now is to gather information and DNA from firearms, casings and bullets and enter it into a nationwide database.

A secure e-mail system was started by the Seattle Police Department that now has more than 120 participants throughout King County.

CrimeStoppers of Puget Sound now has the technology to ensure the anonymity of people who send a text-message tip to police. Police hope that the new tip option will encourage young people to send police information they have about unsolved crimes.

For more information on how to send an anonymous tip, go to crimestoppers-ps.com and scroll down to "Text a Tip hotline" for instructions.

Lt. Ron Wilson, head of the Seattle Police Department's gang unit, said that the social ills that lead young people to commit violent crimes are deeply rooted. The police alone cannot provide a simple solution to the complex problem, he said.

"If this was a result of just one thing, we could fix it," Wilson said. "But we're not going to be able to solve this problem just by going out and arresting people."

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

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

Information in this article, originally published December 17, 2008, was corrected December 18, 2008. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Quincy Coleman sought aid at the community center.