Gunplay hurts 2 in Granite Falls

By Cathy Logg

Herald Writer

GRANITE FALLS — Neighbors were rattled and unable to sleep after an early morning double shooting Tuesday that left one man in satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. A second man was treated for a grazing head wound and later released.

The shooting — the fourth serious gun incident in the Granite Falls area this year — has some residents uneasy while others say it’s simply a sign of the city’s growing pains.

Shortly before 1 a.m., Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies answered a call about a disturbance followed by gunfire in the 300 block of S. Alder Avenue. A 26-year-old Everett man showed up at a home there and confronted a 20-year-old man about an unknown issue, sheriff’s spokeswoman Jan Jorgensen said.

The younger man was shot when the argument escalated, she said.

Two other men, hearing the commotion, came out of the home and one allegedly shot the Everett man as he tried to leave. The Everett man, who suffered a wound to his right flank, managed to get into his car and drive away. A deputy later stopped the car in the Lake Stevens area.

Both wounded men were airlifted to Seattle’s regional trauma center.

"My husband and I were sleeping," said Eva Harris, who lives next door to the house where the shooting occurred. "All of a sudden I heard yelling. Right immediately after, I heard pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Six shots in succession. My husband just bolted out of bed."

Harris immediately checked on her sleeping 7-year-old son to make sure he was OK, while her husband, Jackie, called 911.

Neighbors Albert Hansen and Beulah Shaffer had gone to bed about 10 p.m. and also awoke "from a dead sleep" at the noise.

"We haven’t had a sleepless night like this in four or five years," Hansen said. "It’s ordinarily quiet here."

The light-blue, two-story house was quiet in the afternoon after most of the investigators had left. Wind chimes and an American flag hung by the front door and recycling bins and a bicycle lay in the fenced front yard. The occupants declined comment to The Herald.

Police chief Chuck Allen called the rash of gunfire in Granite an aberration.

"This is far more than we’ve had forever in one year," he said. "We’ve had discharges of firearms in the past with nobody hurt."

Before this year, the last homicide in the city was in 1975.

In addition to Tuesday’s shooting, serious gun incidents this year include one homicide in the city and another in the area between Granite Falls and Arlington, and a teen who accidentally shot himself in the head and survived.

"As you grow, crime comes with it," Allen said. The city’s population has more than doubled over the last 15 years to about 2,500 and is patrolled by five officers and him, he said.

"It’s just going to keep growing," he said. "We’re just going to start hitting the neighborhoods a little harder now, scoping out places of suspected criminal activity."

The Alder Avenue home was not a trouble spot, he said.

"Granite Falls is growing up," said resident Tanya Gairns. "It’s not a little town anymore."

You can call Herald Writer Cathy Logg at 425-339-3437 or send e-mail to

logg@heraldnet.com.

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