'Senseless loss': Fall City, WA community gathers after family murders
Fall City community reeling from family shootings
The Fall City, Washington community is trying to heal after the shocking mass shooting of 5 members of one family just a few days ago. We talk with residents, law enforcement, and religious leaders about finding hope in what some in the small city are calling a "senseless" and "tragic" event.
FALL CITY, Wash. - As rain fell outside the Snoqualmie Valley Alliance Church Saturday, community members embraced one another through tears. The King County Sheriff’s Office partnered with the church to give the community a place to process, reflect, and heal, after a 15-year-old boy was charged with shooting and killing his parents and three siblings in Fall City.
"I think there’s just an air of sorrow over the room," Pastor Baly Botten said. FOX 13 cameras weren’t allowed inside the community meeting, but outside, our cameras captured community members hugging and reuniting with one another.
"Nobody sees a tragedy like this coming, the circumstances I think we’re all trying to process," Captain Tim Meyer with the King County Sheriff’s Office said.
"As you can imagine it is just a senseless, heartbreaking tragic loss and the question of why is at the front of everyone’s minds," Botten said. "So how do we as a community not spin our wheels on why but move forward focusing on hope and one another through a hard time."
Botton said this was a big focus of Saturday’s meeting: moving forward and what that road looks like.
"This is a tragic, senseless loss and situation and there is seemingly no hope in the midst of it and yet we as a community have an opportunity to lean on one another maybe more deeply than we had to before." he continued.
"Every community, they’re going to be resilient, they’re going to work through it, they’re going to stay together, and I think it’s that connectiveness and community that’s going to see them through it," Meyer said.
About 100 community members attended Saturday’s meeting, including Susan Street-Wong.
"They’re my neighbors and so I either knew, maybe friends of theirs, they’re still part of the community and I grieve for them and their extended families, the little survivor and my heart goes out to the perpetrator, we need to stop and reassess before we cast judgement," Street-Wong said.
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