Seattle road sign references shooting of CEO Brian Thompson
Early morning commuters on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue were greeted with an unsettling sign as they headed into the city.
An electronic traffic message board — normally the forum for messages like “right lane closed ahead” — had been reprogrammed with an ominous message.
“One less CEO,” the sign, at the corner of southbound Aurora and Dexter Way, said, “many more to go.”
The message was apparently a reference to the recent killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was shot last week in Manhattan. A suspect, Luigi Mangione, has since been arrested, with writings indicating anger at corporate greed and the practices of health insurance companies.
A KOMO photographer posted a picture of the sign at around 4:30 a.m. Thursday; the message was gone by the time the sun came up.
The sign was being used by a construction/development company, 601 Holdings LLC, that is building a hotel and apartment building at the corner of Aurora Avenue North and Roy Street, about 2 miles from the sign.
“This firm has a street improvement permit for an upcoming full closure of Roy St at 601 Aurora Ave,” Ethan Bergerson, a Seattle Department of Transportation spokesperson, wrote in an email. “Their traffic control plan includes signage to alert drivers of the upcoming road closure in this location.”
Bergerson said they sent an SDOT team to check on the sign Thursday morning, but by the time they arrived the message was gone.
William Choi, a representative for the developer, said they rented the message board from National Barricade, a local company that rents traffic control equipment.
There is a keyboard on the sign to change the message, but Choi said it was locked. He also said a password is required to get the keyboard to work — like the passcode on an cellphone — and that no one at his firm even knew the password.
Choi said they just tell National Barricade what they want the sign to say and National Barricade programs it.
“We are appalled at the message and had no part in changing the display,” Choi said. “We’re not political.”
A person who answered the phone at National Barricade said they didn’t know anything about it. A manager at the company did not return a request for comment.
It’s not the first tomfoolery involving a National Barricade sign. In 2019, an electronic message board in North Seattle was programmed to encourage impeachment just as Donald Trump’s first impeachment investigation was beginning.