Police seek suspect after Seattle festival shooting leaves three dead

Gunfire ripped through the final night of the Bite of Seattle at Seattle Center, near the Space Needle, leaving three people dead and at least four others wounded as festivalgoers filled the downtown grounds. Police said a 15-year-old was taken into custody, court documents said a second shooter was killed at the scene, and investigators were looking for at least one more suspect.

The shooting erupted around 6:00 p.m. local time on July 26, 2026, in one of Seattle’s busiest public gathering places. Witnesses described a chaotic scene as the annual food festival was shut down or disrupted near the Space Needle, a landmark that draws families, tourists and local crowds to the heart of the city.

Seattle police later said court documents indicated there were at least three shooters involved in what was described as a shootout. That detail, paired with the arrest of a 15-year-old, put youth access to guns at the center of the case and raised hard questions about how armed teenagers can end up inside a dense crowd at a major festival. Some reports said five people were wounded, including a child or toddler.

Mayor Katie Wilson called the violence “an act of horrific violence” in a statement from the Office of the Mayor of Seattle. The attack landed in a place built for public celebration, not emergency response, and turned the Bite of Seattle festival grounds into a crime scene within minutes.

The case also exposed the fragility of crowd-safety planning at open-air events that attract thousands of people to confined urban spaces. Seattle Center sits at the edge of downtown and around the Space Needle, where a single burst of gunfire can send a packed crowd scrambling before police and medics can fully reach the scene. As witnesses tried to make sense of the shooting, police asked for help identifying the remaining suspect while the investigation continued around one of the city’s most visible public venues.