Gunman Kills 2, Injures 2 in Seattle Office

In confounding silence, a gunman killed two men and wounded two others in an office here Wednesday, then fled on foot into a nearby residential neighborhood, where he eluded capture even as police scoured the streets with search dogs.

The latest, bleakly familiar mass shooting began at 10:30 a.m., when the gunman--clad in camouflage jacket, dark hat and sunglasses--pushed open the back door of a commercial building near a shipyard just north of downtown Seattle, along the Lake Union waterfront. He walked calmly through one office and into another, where he opened fire with a 9-millimeter handgun--never saying a word, according to witnesses.

The gunman was so composed, carrying only his lone weapon, that many workers in the building had no idea what was happening as the deadly rampage unfolded.

They heard a few pops but thought it was a staple gun.

They saw the camouflage jacket, thought it odd--but not ominous.

There was no yelling. No confrontation. No unmistakable burst of gunfire.

But there was, once again, tragedy. One man died at the scene. Another, shot three times in the chest and abdomen, died at a hospital during surgery. A third man was critically injured, with a bullet in the chest.

The King County medical examiner’s office said Russell James Brisendine, 43, was one of the dead. The other fatality was identified as Peter Giles, 26, whose uncles owned the yard.

“[Giles] was just a super young fellow,” his grandfather, Richard Kelly Sr., told KIRO-TV. Giles had worked at the shipyard since he was 12. “Who would expect for a decent, law-abiding, wonderful citizen to get just shot in cold blood?”

The fourth victim, a 19-year-old man, was stable enough despite an arm wound to give police a description of the scruffy, bearded gunman. But, like others in the building, he could not identify the killer. With few leads to go on, authorities were at a loss to suggest a motive or even to speculate why the gunman chose the Northlake Shipyard office building to stage his attack.

“He walked in and started shooting. That’s all we know,” Seattle police spokeswoman Pam McCammon said.

As dusk fell, police acknowledged they weren’t even sure who to look for.

The description of the gunman--a white or light-skinned man in his 30s, about 5 feet, 10 inches, of medium build--was too “generic” to be of much use, Police Chief Norm Stamper said. Even the seemingly telling details--of an unkempt beard and a dark trench coat over the camouflage jacket--were deemed almost worthless: “Obviously, facial hair can be shaved and clothing can be changed,” Stamper said, “so we don’t have a terribly good description of this suspect.”

Pursuing tip after tip but no confirmed sightings, police warned repeatedly that the gunman is considered armed and very dangerous. Authorities ordered principals at 20 local schools to bar their doors and keep children inside until police could escort them to buses at the end of the school day. And they cautioned residents near the shipyard to be alert to possible signs that the fugitive had broken into a home or was hiding in a yard.

As the search continued past dark, hours after the morning shooting, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell asked the public to help and to be careful. “Check on your neighbors, check on senior citizens, check on your premises,” he said.

Despite those sober warnings, some residents were more curious than frightened, venturing out to watch and even photograph the manhunt.

It made for a surreal scene: Scores of officers combed the narrow, shaded streets block by block, creeping slowly around corners and poking through bushes, machine guns at the ready. Meanwhile, residents--some barred from their homes while the search continued--milled around in a chilly drizzle, gawking at the sight of armored police vehicles rolling past their Halloween decorations.

“We want him to be caught, but at the same time, it’s exciting watching something like this happen,” resident Barbara Mathison said.

Others, however, found in the day’s events not excitement but fatigue--a depressing, oppressing sense of “not again.” The deaths here came one day after a Xerox employee shot dead seven of his co-workers at an office in Honolulu. It instantly became another entry in a frightening tally of mass shootings: At a church in Fort Worth. A day-care center in Los Angeles. Two stock brokerages in Atlanta. A high school in Colorado. And on and on. And on.

After so much blood staining so many cities, after so much violence in once-thought-safe locales, there was little how-could-it-happen-here clucking. There was, instead, resignation: It could, of course, happen here. Happen anywhere.

“It was time something like this happened in Seattle,” said Justin David, who works a block away from the shipyard.

Another area employee, Scotty Pierce, who owns a boat shop across from the targeted office, ran down a list of the cities hit by shootings this year. Then he stopped. He couldn’t name them all. And he wasn’t surprised to have to add Seattle to the list.

“It’s numbing,” Pierce said. The insanity. The thought process someone would have to go through to say to themselves, ‘Hey, today’s a good day for me to go out and shoot [four] people.’ It’s incredibly horrific.”

Employees and residents familiar with the Northlake area said it was considered safe until this incident. The shipyard is always noisy and bustling, but the neighborhood just a few blocks away was repeatedly described as “peaceful,” a middle-class blend of apartments and older frame homes.

“It’s a good part of Seattle,” resident Marcus Wood said.

The mayor, meanwhile, insisted that Seattle, which will host a meeting of the World Trade Organization this month, remains “safer than most American cities.”

But on Wednesday, such reassurances rang hollow.

“It can happen anywhere,” said Tammy Ogdon, a receptionist who works just upstairs from the shooting. Sighing, still shaken hours after the incident, she added: “It’s just crazy.”

Marshall reported from Seattle and Simon from St. Louis.