Even the victim of the stabbing on East Pike Street struggled with Seattle police officers, who eventually were able to apply a tourniquet and stop the arterial bleeding.
The Memorial Day weekend began Saturday with a melee involving several dozen people that left one man stabbed in the arm on East Pike Street, between Broadway and 10th Avenue, after the bars closed at 2 a.m., police said.
Officers arrested a man they said was trying to leave the area while attempting to conceal a knife. Seattle police said officers recovered the knife when the man attempted to throw it into a nearby bush.
The man punched and kicked officers in the head and chest before being taken into custody, police said.
According to police, even the victim struggled with officers, who eventually were able to apply a tourniquet and stop the bleeding.
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Police said they had to order the crowd to disperse so that medics could help.
The Seattle Fire Department said the victim was in fair condition at Harborview Medical Center. The hospital had no further information.
Cameron Black, owner of MacGregor Event Staffing, which he says does security for “about 70 percent of the Pike-Pine Corridor” venues, said the incident had nothing to do with any businesses on that block, which include Neumos, the Comet Tavern and the Capitol Lounge.
“It was a drunk individual walking down the street, shoulder-checking everybody, acting tough,” said Black, who talked to his staff about what they had observed.
Black said the man “shoulder-checked the wrong person,” and the man’s group “got into a fight” with the other individual’s group.
The Capitol Hill Seattle Blog had this recounting of the melee:
“The tense scene … left a few responding officers trying to deal with the large and increasingly agitated crowd reported as ‘several hundred hostile’ ” by police radio.
“Officers gave the crowd an order to disperse and a ‘fast backup’ call went out to dispatch available officers from across the city to come to help control the scene on East Pike.”