Suspect charged with stabbings in Seattle's Chinatown International District
Published in News & Features
SEATTLE — King County prosecutors charged a 37-year-old Federal Way man with four counts of first-degree assault and one count of fourth-degree assault Thursday, nearly a week after a series of random stabbings in Seattle’s Chinatown International District ended when police arrested him at gunpoint with the help of witnesses.
The charges filed against Roland Jerome Lee detail five stabbings that happened in quick succession just before 2 p.m. on Nov. 8 along South Jackson Street, between 10th Avenue South and 12th Avenue South. All five victims were men, and four of them were taken to Harborview Medical Center, where at least two victims underwent emergency surgery.
Lee remains a suspect in four other stabbings that occurred between early Thursday and early Friday, also in the Chinatown International District. Seattle police detectives are still investigating those stabbings, and cases have yet to be referred to prosecutors for a charging decision.
Lee, who has nine prior felony convictions, remains jailed in lieu of $2 million bail. During his first court appearance last weekend, a defense attorney told the court that before his most recent arrest, Lee was living with his uncle in Federal Way, does landscaping work and was born and raised in Seattle.
Deputy Chief Eric Barden last week called the random stabbings, which happened over a roughly 38-hour period, “an aberration,” outside the norm for the neighborhood that’s raised safety concerns as a hot spot for open-air drug use, drug dealing and associated violence.
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