Seattle police arrest Capitol Hill man after wife found dead

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle police have arrested an 89-year-old Capitol Hill man in the fatal shooting of his wife at their home Tuesday afternoon.

The man contacted police shortly before 2 p.m. to report he had shot his wife, Detective Patrick Michaud said in a police blotter post, the Seattle Times reported.

Responding officers found the 83-year-old woman dead inside the home in the 200 block of 15th Avenue and arrested the man, police said. Homicide detectives are investigating.

Police did not immediately release details about the moments before the woman’s death. Neither she nor her husband has been publicly identified.

The fatal shooting marked the city’s 19th homicide of 2022. Thirteen of those killings came in the first quarter of the year, and the pace of deadly violence has since slowed.

Still, the city could in 2022 easily meet or surpass the 41 homicides investigated last year, especially because violence tends to spike during summer months.

There were 53 homicides committed in Seattle in 2020, 20 more than in 2019, according to a Seattle Times database compiled with information from police, prosecutors and the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.