Police questioned a man suspected of firing a gun near a self-storage complex on Harbor Avenue around 9:30 p.m., and a K-9 team later tracked down the weapon itself after officers recovered a spent casing nearby. No injuries were reported in the West Seattle incident.
Officers were still working to pin down evidence beyond at least one eyewitness report when the investigation got underway, according to West Seattle Blog, which reported live updates from the scene. Police were already questioning a man suspected of firing a gun at 10:01 p.m., before an officer reported finding a casing on the sidewalk in the 3400 block of Harbor Avenue at 10:08 p.m.
K-9 Team Locates the Missing Firearm
With a single casing and a witness account in hand, police said they hoped to bring in a K-9 team to search for the gun itself. That search paid off: the K-9 team found the weapon at 10:46 p.m., about 1 hour and 16 minutes after the reported 9:30 p.m. gunfire, according to the same outlet's reporting, closing one of the most pressing gaps in the early investigation.
The 3400 block of Harbor Avenue sits along the West Seattle waterfront, a stretch of roadway that has seen gunfire before. More than two years earlier, a shooting elsewhere along Harbor Avenue near the Don Armeni Boat Ramp left an adult man dead at the scene, according to The Seattle Times. In that earlier case, officers found the victim lying in the roadway shortly before 4 a.m. in the 1000 block of Harbor Avenue Southwest, bullets also struck a nearby residence without harming anyone inside, and a second man who had been shot was later found in Renton in stable condition at Harborview Medical Center.
A Pattern of Gunfire Reports Along the West Seattle Shoreline
The gunfire also follows other recent reports of shots fired in West Seattle. An early-morning incident near Beach Drive SW and SW Oregon Street resulted in the recovery of two spent 20-gauge shotgun shells, though responding officers found no injuries or property damage, as previously reported by Hoodline. Residents in that case told police they saw a black sedan leaving southbound after the shots rang out, though no suspect was ever identified or apprehended.
Gunfire reports near the shoreline are not new to the area. Seattle Police checked reports of four suspected gunshots near Me-Kwa-Mooks Park back in November 2016, with no gunshot victim reported at that time. A separate West Seattle incident in March 2025 involved multiple reports of shots fired and property damage near 26th Avenue Southwest and Southwest Brandon Street, though all involved parties had left the area by the time officers arrived, per the Seattle Police Department's blotter.
Citywide Numbers Show a Downward Trend
The incident comes against a backdrop of declining gunfire reports across Seattle. Citywide reports of shootings and shots fired dropped nearly 22% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, Seattle Police Department data showed. Locally, Southwest Precinct Commander Captain Krista Bair told a West Seattle advisory council meeting in May that officers had logged 34 shots-fired incidents across the neighborhood year-to-date.
For now, the Harbor Avenue case remains an open investigation, with a casing found and the gun located by a K-9 team, while the broader circumstances of the gunfire are still being pieced together.
