Three years after Seattle ceded a portion of the city to extremist protesters, the family of a murdered special needs teenager may finally see justice.
On June 20, 2020, 19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr. was fatally shot after a confrontation with a man in Seattle, Washington’s Capital Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), later Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), which resulted in his being pursued and murdered. Thursday, 22-year-old Marcel Long pled guilty to the second-degree murder of Anderson two years after his arrest.
(Video: Fox 13)
Early reports had contended that Long had been recklessly firing his weapon when Anderson was struck. However, as covered by Fox 13, the investigation found that the victim had been shot after he had fallen to the ground indicating that he had been aimed at.
According to the Seattle Times, the pair had a history with one another as a year before the incident Anderson had lost a fight with Long that was later posted on social media. Surveillance footage showed the victim walking away after a firearm was displayed by Long, but the situation had not been diffused and moments later, Anderson was fatally shot.
Long would be eligible for life in prison, but according to his plea deal obtained by The Post Millennial, the murderer is being recommended a sentence of 171.5 months, or just over 14 years, with another possible 36 months of “community custody”
The sentencing hearing was scheduled for June 30 and would mark the second legal victory for the victim’s family.
Previously, Horace Anderson Sr. had sued Seattle’s then-Mayor Jenny Durkan, City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, and the city itself for permitting the CHOP zone to exist and so “undermined the safety of others.”
The victim had been transported to Harborview Medical Center in the back of a pickup truck as first responders refused to enter the protesters’ territory and risk their own safety. As a result, Anderson was pronounced dead a half-hour after the initial 911 call. For the alleged negligence of those named in the lawsuit, the city settled with the victim’s father for $500,000 last year.
As previously reported, in the days after the murder of his son, Anderson had voiced his disdain for Durkan and other leaders who didn’t even bother to contact him to offer their condolences. “I still ain’t heard from the mayor,” he told KCPQ at the time.
However, then-President Donald Trump did reach out to the family to express what the Democratic leader could not. “Incredibly, Donald Trump called me,” Anderson said. “The president of the United States called me today and talked to me today.”
“He gave his condolences, and, me I’m not a political guy…I said, nobody like you, but in this camera, I’ll tell you right now, Donald Trump called me, and he didn’t have to call me, he didn’t have to do nothing!” the grieving father went on.
The guilty plea from Long also followed U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly’s decision to sanction the city after he learned that they had deleted texts related to CHOP. “The court finds substantial circumstantial evidence that the city acted with the requisite intent necessary to impose a severe sanction and that the city’s conduct exceeds gross negligence,” Zilly said.
“City officials deleted thousands of text messages from their city-owned phones in complete disregard of their legal obligation to preserve relevant evidence,” the judge continued. “Further, the city significantly delayed disclosing … that thousands of text messages had been deleted. As a result, substantial evidence has been destroyed by the city and is unavailable to plaintiffs to support their position in this litigation.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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