Man arrested in 2020 Seattle protest zone killing

SEATTLE (AP) – A man was arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a young man in Seattle’s Capitol Hill temporary organized protest zone, police said.

Seattle officials and U.S. marshals arrested 19-year-old Marcel Long in Des Moines, a suburb of Seattle on Monday, the Seattle Times reported.

Police identified Long shortly after Lorenzo “Lil Renz” Anderson was murdered on June 20, 2020, and learned that Long had fled the state, according to court documents filed in August. He has since been wanted on a $ 2 million arrest warrant.

It wasn’t immediately known whether Long would have an attorney speaking on his behalf.

Members of the US Marshal’s Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force recently discovered that Long was in an apartment complex in Des Moines, the US marshals said in a press release. Long was seen on a local street and arrested after a brief car chase, the press release said. He was admitted to King County Jail on Monday afternoon, according to prison records.

Anderson and Long have apparently been at odds since 2019 after they were embroiled in a fight Anderson lost, which was posted on YouTube, the loading papers said.

Several people called 911 at around 2:20 a.m. on June 20 last year to report the shooting. But police officers who responded were met by an angry crowd and left after someone yelled that the person who had been shot had already been taken to Harborview Medical Center, the charges state.

Anderson died 33 minutes after the first emergency calls at the hospital.

Although protesters kept detectives and investigators away from crime scenes from the Capitol Hill organized protest zone, several people either contacted the police or were interviewed by detectives in the 72 hours following the fatal shooting. A man photographed blood stains on the sidewalk and turned grenade casings into police, along with notes of where they were found, say, indictments. Anonymous evidence also identified Long as a suspect.

A Capitol Hill business owner provided the police with high quality video surveillance footage showing Anderson and Long talking before Long drew a gun and pointed it at Anderson, the charges state. Other people tried to hold Long when Anderson left, but he ran after Anderson.

When Long and several others caught up with Anderson, the footage showed a fist fight, then Long raised his arm and appeared to shoot his gun twice, the charges state.

Anderson’s father and mother have filed separate lawsuits against the city, claiming city officials created a dangerous environment by allowing racial justice demonstrators to occupy the zone. They say the police and fire brigade did not help when Anderson bled to death, the lawsuit said.

“We are grateful for the hard work by law enforcement to finally bring in the suspect who shot Lorenzo Anderson,” said Evan Oshan, a lawyer representing Anderson’s estate and his father, Horace Anderson, in an email statement. “However, the flawed political system that allowed the CHOP zone to exist and lawlessness to rule in Seattle is at the core of why Lorenzo, a black teenager with special needs, bled to death and died on June 20, 2020.”

In the other fatal shots during the CHOP period, no arrests were made and no suspicious information was released. That shootout killed 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. and injured a 14-year-old boy.