Homicides Five And Six for 2007

 Twenty-one year old Kyle Grinnell was using a pressure washer on the triplex he lived in on South Tyler Street around 4:00pm on Wednesday. A dark sedan pulled up and fired a few shots at Kyle. He died the next day from his wounds. Police say it was not gang related and that they were following up on some leads. 

Drive-bys are nothing new in Tacoma. One year in the early 90's we had more drive-by shootings than Los Angeles. Not per capita. We actually had more shootings than a city ten times bigger. The problem is even now, when a news outlet outside of Tacoma hears that someone got killed in a drive-by in Tacoma, their immediate response is, "Where's the news in that?"

The same can be said of the shooting that occurred yesterday on Hilltop. Two cars with two people in them parked near each other. One man got out to talk to the driver of the other car. They began to argue. The man's passenger also got out of the car and then pulled out a gun and fired several times at the driver.

The driver's car went down a hill and hit a parked car on South G Street. Police say that the driver was acquainted with the shooters. No arrests have been made as of this writing.

Two homicides in two days is something that doesn't happen often in Tacoma. The Associated Press wrote a quick article about it can be found posted on  Most of the time if someone gets shot on the east side or the south side or in a drive-by, it barely rates news coverage at all.

The major exception about this is The News Tribune and especially the News Tribune blog Lights & Sirens: http://blogs.thenewstribune.com/crime/ Of course according to my stats, half of you found this page from Lights & Sirens so I'm not telling you anything  new.

This constitutes the fifth and sixth homicides for Tacoma in 2007 if you include the police involved shooting of Berry Milsap. The Milsap shooting was obviously justified, but justifiable homicides are still homicides.

-Jack