Two Arrests Made In Connection To Chop Suey Shooting
As we reported early yesterday morning, one man was fatally shot and two others wounded during a show at Chop Suey on Saturday night. Yesterday afternoon and evening, two men, aged 25 and 18, were arrested and booked into King County Jail on charges connected to the tragedy. The 25-year-old faces felony charges, while the 18-year-old will be looking at a lower level assault charge. The violence has brought a somber note to the hiphop community's typically playful conversations, evidenced by the dialogue at last night's impromptu summit of some of Seattle's foremost local artists, promoters, and other community leaders at Moe Bar. That the gathering even occurred is an acknowledgment of how seriously the Chop Suey shooting could affect the city's music industry.
The group was clear on how important it is for them to respond proactively to the weekend's violence, and organized a few specific ways they plan to do that on a city-wide level. The consensus formed through a respectful but lively debate, informed both by those who had been at the show on Saturday and by senior members of the community who have seen the cycle of anti-hiphop sentiment related to tragic waves of violence rise and fall in Seattle before. Everyone agreed that in the next few weeks, one of the most important things they can do is to support the victims and their families as much as possible. Details are forthcoming about how the community can help, but for now, friends and family are rallying around each other to get through the next crucial hours.
Big Kountry, one of the promoters of Saturday night's show, has spent the last day almost exclusively at Harborview with the friends and families of the men who were shot; several others at the meeting have visited the hospital over the past thirty-six hours to check in and to offer their assistance. First Black Prez, who was sent to Harborview with life-threatening injuries shortly after the shooting, is now out of surgery and in stable condition, though still in the I.C.U. His mother is scheduled to arrive from the East Coast this morning, at which point the hospital can release more detailed information about Black Prez's condition.
