Three people injured in early-morning north Spokane shooting

A north Spokane alley was roped with red crime scene tape, dotted with yellow evidence markers and crawling with investigators after a shooting left three people injured early Wednesday morning.

Gunshots rang out about 2:30 a.m. in the 800 block of East Everett Avenue, said Officer Tricia Leming, spokeswoman for the department. The location is about five blocks northeast of NorthTown Mall.

Leming said victims arrived at hospitals by ambulance and by private vehicle.

Police released few details of the shooting, and the extent of the victims’ injuries was unclear. No one had been arrested by Wednesday afternoon. Leming said it appeared the shooting was targeted.

Police found more than 20 shell casings on the ground, Leming said.

Officers and fire personnel flooded the neighborhood with lights and sirens, with some officers roaming the neighborhood on foot in the wee hours. Police K-9 units searched yards in the area.

Detectives were at the scene investigating well into the afternoon.

The alley was blocked by police cars and orange and white wooden traffic barricades late Wednesday morning. The barricades also blocked traffic on Cincinnati Street from Everett to Crown avenues.

Neighbors reported hearing successions of gunshots and seeing a car speeding down the paved alley, which runs east and west from Cincinnati to Nevada streets and between Everett and Crown.

Bob Smith said he barely got to sleep again when the shots rang out. He heard two bursts of bullets and then another set a few seconds later. The shots sounded like they came from an automatic weapon, he said.

“I looked all around and couldn’t see anything,” Smith said. “Right after that, the police all showed up.”

Smith said he’s never experienced such a neighborhood shooting in his roughly 60 years at his Everett Avenue home. He said a truck in the alley was shot at in the last 10 years, but nothing measured up to Wednesday.

Natalie Erickson, another neighbor, said the shooting made her feel a “little uneasy,” and it was “unsettling.”

Erickson said she and her husband’s surveillance cameras captured a car speeding down the alley.

“That’s why we have cameras to keep an eye on things,” she said.