A 17-year-old boy who was rushed into emergency surgery after being shot in the leg at North SeaTac Park last month has admitted the wound was self-inflicted, not the result of a group shooting as initially reported. King County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to reports of a shooting at the park on August 12, pulling the teen from a car and applying a tourniquet to stop the bleeding before paramedics arrived.
Body-camera footage released Tuesday, and first reported by the King County Sheriff's Office on Facebook, shows deputies working to control the bleeding from a gunshot wound to the boy's thigh and leg after a 911 call identified the caller as a 17-year-old boy at the park. Early accounts of the incident described a shooting involving a group of teenagers, but as The B-Town Blog reported, the footage confirms the teen told responding deputies he shot himself. SeaTac deputies continued providing aid at the scene until paramedics arrived and took him to a hospital, where he was rushed into surgery.
Deputies Recommend Felony Charge
Deputies have recommended charging the boy with unlawful firearm possession, according to the sheriff's office account of the incident. Under Washington law, possessing a firearm while under 18 constitutes second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm, a Class C felony that can carry up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, per the relevant state statute cited by Justia Law.
If adjudicated guilty in juvenile court, state law mandates a minimum of 10 days confinement along with court-ordered participation in evidence-based programs such as aggression replacement training or functional family therapy, according to FindLaw. Because deputies removed the teen from a car, state law also requires courts to notify the Department of Licensing to revoke driving privileges for minors found to have possessed a firearm inside a vehicle, per the statute published by Washington State Government.
Rapid Response Reflects Deputy Medical Training
The tourniquet deployment that helped stabilize the teen before paramedics arrived reflects specialized emergency casualty care training that King County Sheriff's Office deputies receive, sometimes referred to as “Care Under Fire,” which requires them to carry tourniquets on shift specifically to control life-threatening hemorrhage. The teen was ultimately treated at Harborview Medical Center, which UW Medicine describes as the only designated Level I adult and pediatric trauma center in Washington State, maintaining round-the-clock in-house surgical teams for gunshot injuries.
North SeaTac Park, where the shooting occurred, spans 205 acres owned by the Port of Seattle and leased to the City of SeaTac as an airport noise buffer, home to walking trails, sports fields, a BMX track, and the SeaTac Community Center, according to the Port of Seattle. SeaTac does not run its own police department; instead, it contracts with the King County Sheriff's Office to staff the SeaTac Police Department under an interlocal agreement managed by Precinct 4 command staff, per the King County Sheriff's Office.
Part of a Wider Rise in Youth Gun Injuries
The incident lands amid a documented surge in youth firearm injuries across King County. A 2024 report from Public Health – Seattle & King County found that youth ages 0 to 17 accounted for 15 percent of all shooting victims countywide that year, up from 9 percent in 2023, with total youth shooting victims reaching 61 — a 45 percent jump in a single year and double the 2019 total, according to Seattle's Child. The same data shows that 65 percent of youth shooting victims under 18 in King County that year were shot outside Seattle itself, underscoring how suburban cities and unincorporated areas like SeaTac have borne a disproportionate share of the trend.
The North SeaTac Park case follows a string of recent gun-violence incidents handled by King County Sheriff's Office deputies across South King County contract jurisdictions. Deputies rushed a Burien shooting victim to Harborview just weeks earlier, and an overnight shooting in Skyway around the same time left one person dead with no suspects identified. Deputies had also fatally shot a driver near Sea-Tac following a crash the previous month, a separate case that remains under review by Renton police.
