SEATTLE — A fatal Christmas Day shooting in a University District apartment lobby was the 69th homicide committed in Seattle last year, tying a record number of violent deaths last seen in 1994.
Just hours after Corey Woo Seong Roe, 37, was gunned down Dec. 25 in Seattle, Pedro Balderas, 25, was fatally shot in Federal Way, bringing King County’s 2023 homicide total to 141, nearly double the number of killings just four years earlier.
“2023 was a concerning year,” said Casey McNerthney, a spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. He noted that the number of deputy prosecutors who respond to homicide scenes and attend victims’ autopsies has doubled in recent years as a direct result of the spike in killings.
Only when the number of annual homicides goes back down to levels last seen roughly a decade ago “will there be reassurance that we’re through the worst of it,” McNerthney said.
King County had 54 homicides in 2014, according to Seattle Times data. That figure has increased every year since — with the exception of 2019, whose 74 killings were four fewer than the year before, and 2022, when 119 such deaths matched the previous year’s total.
No single underlying reason explains the latest year-over-year increase in homicides, with contributing factors including drugs, gangs, road rage, domestic violence and homelessness. Shootouts involving multiple guns were also much more frequent.
Seattle’s 69 homicides — nearly half of the county’s total — matched a record total from both 1994 and 1969, according to The Times’ archives.
Seattle police, however, have put 2023’s count at 73, a number that includes the discovery of a human skull in Rainier Beach, the death of an unborn baby who died after a pregnant woman was fatally shot in Belltown and the delayed deaths of two men, one who was shot in 2021 and a second who was stabbed last year.
The numbers can differ year to year because victims of shootings and other violent assaults often suffer catastrophic, life-changing injuries and frequently die from complications weeks, months or years after their initial injury.
Aside from Seattle police, the King County Sheriff’s Office investigated the greatest number of homicides countywide in 2023: six in unincorporated areas of South King County, four in White Center, three in Burien, two in Maple Valley and one each in Newcastle, Ravensdale, SeaTac, Skyway and Sammamish.
While Kent police investigated the next highest total with 15 homicides last year, the last homicide occurred there in late July — giving the city a five-month period without any killings, according to The Times’ data.
There were 12 homicides in Federal Way and eight apiece in Renton and Auburn. Redmond, Lake Forest Park and Tukwila all had two homicides last year, and Des Moines and Issaquah both recorded one.
The Washington State Patrol also investigated one homicide, the December stabbing of a man found under a state highway in Burien.
Those numbers do not include people killed in confrontations with police. Four men were fatally shot by police last year: two in Kent and one each in Federal Way and Bellevue.
King County has had relief from deadly violence over the past two weeks, as officials have not confirmed a single homicide countywide since the pair of Christmas killings.
