Local News

The Seattle Police Department is looking for a suspect who shot a man in the shoulder near Harborview Medical Center this afternoon and then ran.

The man was shot in the 800 block of Jefferson Street at about 4 p.m. and sustained a non-life-threatening wound, according to police.

SPD says the suspect is still at large. He’s described as a black male, about 5-foot-4, mid-30s, with either short hair or a bald head. He was wearing a black hoody and black jacket. Police said he is armed with a small, black handgun.

Police spokesman Jeff Kappel said the circumstances leading up the shooting are unknown and under investigation.

Police ask anyone with information about the shooting or possible suspect to call 911. Anonymous tips are welcome.

UPDATE 11:00 P.M.| The Stewart Street off-ramp opened back up just before 11 p.m., according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.

UPDATE 8:00 P.M.| The Seattle Police Department has cited the driver of the semi-truck that struck the pole for misdemeanor hit-and-run and property damage offenses.

The driver of the 2002 Peterbilt semi-truck was driving westbound on Stewart Street and trying to make a northbound turn onto Yale Avenue North when it struck the pole, according to the Seattle Police Department. Part of the pole was sheared off and caused three transformers mounted on top of it to crash to the ground. Live power lines were also downed across Yale Avenue North and Stewart Street.

The driver continued on until officers stopped him at Dexter Avenue and Mercer Street.

Seattle police are still investigating the accident with assistance from Washington State Patrol Commercial Vehicle Enforcement.

EARLIER POST

A truck that crashed into a light pole in Seattle this morning created daylong problems for drivers and Seattle City Light customers.

At about 8:45 a.m., the truck crashed into a pole near the intersection of Denny Way and Yale Avenue. No one was seriously injured either in the accident or after the pole toppled bringing down powerlines and three transformers.

Seattle City Light says about 3,600 customers in the Capitol Hill, First Hill and South Lake Union lost power. For all but about 30 customers power was restored by 10 a.m.. The rest should have it back by 6:45 p.m.

Mineral oil leaked from the transformers but crews were able to contain it and clean it up.

The southbound Interstate 5 off-ramp to Stewart Street was still closed as of 5 p.m. as repair work continues. The Seattle Department of Transportation reported backups on Eastlake Avenue East because of the closure.

A man was robbed at gunpoint Saturday on Seattle’s First Hill, and police are looking for the suspect.

The victim was on East Union Street near Summit Avenue at about 5:30 p.m. when a man approached him from behind, according to Seattle police. The suspect pointed a gun at the victim and demanded his cellphone, then walked away. He turned once more and pointed the gun at the victim before leaving the area, police said.

Police described the suspect as a black male in his mid-20s about six feet tall. He was thin and had dreadlocks, and used black handgun.

UPDATE, 4:00 p.m. |  Seattle Police Department officers arrested a stabbing suspect Tuesday afternoon in South King County, according to their online blotter. He was booked into the King County Jail for an assault investigation.

The Associated Press

Police say there was no apparent reason for a man to stab a security guard Tuesday morning at a downtown Seattle Bank of America branch.

Groundbreaking will happen for the First Hill Streetcar next month, after the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance Monday to enter a $68 million construction contract with Stacy & Witbeck.

Voters in the Puget Sound region approved the line in 2008 as part of the Sound Transit 2 plan, a sales tax boost that mainly funds suburban light-rail extensions to Northgate, Lynnwood, Overlake, Kent and Federal Way by the early 2020s.  Seattle’s new streetcar will run from Pioneer Square to the International District/Chinatown Station, then past Seattle University and First Hill hospitals, ending at Sound Transit’s 2016 Capitol Hill light-rail station on Broadway.

Seattle will manage design and construction as described here, while Sound Transit funds nearly all the $134 million budget, which includes a $13 million contingency fund to defend against cost overruns. Seattle is chipping in $1.2 million for utility and sidewalk improvements.

Trains will begin service in early 2014, a slip from the late 2013 date the city earlier published.  Design features include bicycle lanes separates from cars, and small landscaped plazas at each station.  The railcars, to be built in Seattle by Pacifica Marine, will contain onboard batteries and regenerative braking – in essence allowing southbound trips, mostly downhill, without overhead power lines to conflict with Metro’s popular electric trolleybuses.  A project open house is Wednesday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Silver Cloud Inn, near the corner of Broadway and Madison Street.

Seattle is seeking a $2 million federal grant to plan an extension beyond Capitol Hill Station, continuing north to Roy Street, said city Councilman Tom Rasmussen, transportation committee chairman. “I do think if the streetcar doesn’t go through the main part of the commercial district on Broadway, people are going to scratch their heads and wonder, why did it stop there?” Rasmussen said.

Nearly 8,000 City Light customers were without power Wednesday as a storm whipped through the city.

The outage affected 4,000 customers on First Hill, where power was expected to be restored by 3 p.m.

Another 3,900 customers in the Roosevelt neighborhood lost power, but it was restored by Wednesday afternoon to all but one customer.  City Light said the Roosevelt outage was caused by problems with an underground cable, but didn’t know immediately what caused the First Hill outage.

An upcoming contract to build First Hill Streetcar trains will include assembly jobs here in the Seattle area, the office of Mayor Mike McGinn said late Tuesday.

The winning team is to be announced mid-day Wednesday in South Lake Union.

Streetcar jobs have been a high-profile issue in many cities. Modern streetcars, including the first train sets in Portland and the first three on Seattle’s South Lake Union line, were built by companies in the Czech Republic. Seattle’s streetcars came from Inekon in 2007.  Since then, a new manufacturer, United Streetcar, was created by Oregon Iron Works in Portland and says it is building 13 railcars currently. The effort to create a homegrown railcar industry has been lauded by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

The “love affair” in Portland is a good political boost for locally-sponsored streetcar projects, and a model for what can happen here, said Bruce Agnew, policy director of the pro-rail Cascadia Center at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. Another rail-employment success story, Agnew said, is Pacifica Marine in Seattle, which has been assembling Spanish Talgo trains for the Amtrak Cascades line since the mid-’90s, providing jobs for ex-Boeing employees, among others.  Several U.S. cities are building lines, asking for federal aid and creating a potentially broader domestic market for a U.S. builder.

The $130 million First Hill line, connecting the International District/Chinatown Station to the future Capitol Hill Station, is to open in 2013. Construction starts next year.

Typical modern streetcars are worth $3 million to $4 million each. The new railcars built in Seattle probably will need to be compatible with the South Lake Union tracks, for the city to reach its long-term goal of creating an interconnected system.