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MARYSVILLE PILCHUCK SHOOTING
Questions, but few answers Tribes grieve, call for unity By Eric Stevick and Andrew Gobin Herald Writers
TULALIP — As the family of school shooter Jaylen Fryberg makes final funeral arrangements, the Tulalip community senses the world is watching. Death within the tribes is a time for families and friends to gather privately to grieve. Protecting and supporting those families is the tribes’ foremost priority. In an effort to bring understanding to their customs, the Tulalip Tribes released a statement Wednesday, denouncing the “horrific actions” of the 15-year-old tribal member who killed two classmates and wounded three others in Friday’s shooting in the Marysville Pilchuck High School cafeteria. The tribes described the shootings as the “acts of an individual, not a family, not a tribe.” “As we grieve our losses and pray for the recovery of the injured, the Tulalip Tribes continue to work with our neighbors in the Marysville community,” the statement said. Their grief is extended to the shooter’s family. “The tribe holds up our people who are struggling through times of loss,” the statement said. “We are supporting the family of Jaylen Fryberg in their time of loss, but that does not mean we condone his actions.” Two tribal leaders shared similar thoughts with Marysville School District parents Tuesday night. See CALL FOR UNITY, back page, this section
GENNA MARTIN / THE HERALD
Kylee Johnson (left), 13, and Ashley Vanny, 14, spell out the name “Gia” using candles Wednesday night at the memorial wall at Marysville Pilchuck High School. Gia Soriano died Sunday night at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, after she was shot in the head Friday.
Investigators’ focus: Evidence, facts By Rikki King and Diana Hefley Herald Writers
MARYSVILLE — Eventually, there will be some answers. Hundreds of pages of investigative records will become public. They will reveal what detectives believe happened in the days and weeks leading up to the burst of violence Friday in a high school cafeteria. Finding answers could take a year. It could take two. As emotions and judgments pick up speed following Friday’s deadly shooting at Marysville Pilchuck High School, the clock slows down for investigators. Each witness. Each bullet fragment. Each text message. The Snohomish County Multiple Agency Response Team, or SMART, the county-wide cadre of homicide investigators, is in
Pumpkins with the names of the victims and shooter of the Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting carved into them sit along the south fence of the school, which has become a growing memorial.
charge of finding the truth. The team was requested because of the scope and
complexity of the investigation. Two Marysville detectives are part of that team.
Detectives owe it to the victims and their families to release only accurate information and to do the investigation the right way, Snohomish County sheriff’s spokeswoman Shari Ireton said Wednesday. A large volume of information — unverified and frequently coming from anonymous sources — already is in circulation. “We only want to release facts that have been verified through the investigative process,” Ireton said. “A tweet is not fact.” Detectives have reasons for not revealing details before the investigation is complete. “We have to protect the integrity of the case,” sheriff’s detective Brad Walvatne, a member of SMART, said Wednesday. “We don’t want to poison a witness’ See INVESTIGATION, back page, this section
First-responders’ decisions questioned Herald Writer
EVERETT — Just days after the fatal Marysville Pilchuck High School shootings, Seattle trauma experts are questioning decisions to send victims to an Everett hospital — and by ambulance instead of helicopter. The executive in charge of Airlift Northwest said she was puzzled when first responders at the scene opted to transport patients by ambulance instead of helicopters that were hovering nearby. And the chief of trauma at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle said she wonders why patients weren’t sent immediately to her hospital. All four wounded teens were
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taken by ambulance to Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, which is about 8 miles from the high school. Two later were transferred to Harborview, which is 38 miles from Marysville by highway and 10 to 20 minutes by air. Greg Corn, chief of the Marysville Fire District, said that while helicopters were available, “Patients were already loaded in medic units for transport.” “Even if the helicopters were hovering at the high school, it would have taken at least 10 to 15 minutes to set up a landing zone and transfer the patient to the helicopter,” he said in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon. Timelines provided by fire officials and Airlift Northwest seem to support Corn’s
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analysis. Ambulances transporting patients began departing the high school about the time two helicopters arrived overhead. The ambulances arrived at Providence within 10 to 12 minutes. Still, Chris Martin, executive director of Airlift Northwest, said the helicopters might have saved time, even for the trip to Providence. “It just seems like to all of us, a school shooting with multiple victims, it was just odd that both helicopters were turned away” without even landing, she said. Meanwhile, Dr. Eileen Bulger, the chief of trauma at Harborview, wondered why the region’s sole Level I trauma center wasn’t involved in early treatment. Harborview, she said, was
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ready with a team that included a pediatric trauma team and other pediatric specialists. All four patients were teenagers. Her concerns, and those of Martin, were first reported by The Seattle Times on Tuesday. While she has questions, Bulger on Tuesday said she didn’t have enough information to know if Harborview specialists could have made a difference in the outcome for the patients. “We’ll have a meeting with everyone involved, the emergency medical services, the airlift team and the hospitals to debrief the incident,” Bulger said. “That will allow us to have a better sense of what factors” went into the decisions. At about 10:39 a.m. Friday,
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Jaylen R. Fryberg, 15, shot his five friends in the Marysville Pilchuck High School cafeteria with a handgun. One friend died at the scene. Then Fryberg killed himself. That left four wounded in need of urgent medical care. Medics were on the scene at 10:49 a.m. after police determined it was safe. By 11:25 a.m., all four patients had arrived at Providence — the first at 11:10 a.m. Corn said the decision to transport those patients by ambulance was made by the incident commander, a fire department battalion chief, based on direction from Providence. “That comes out of Providence’s emergency room,” he said. See RESPOND, Page A2 Clouds cry 59/52, C6
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By Sharon Salyer
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