By Jennifer Lee
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SEATTLE (KCPQ) — Surveillance video captured the bizarre attack of a man slamming rocks into a Seattle restaurant, sending customers diving for cover.
“My immediate thought was it was a gun because it was just the ‘pop,’” the restaurant’s bartender Annalisa Lafayette said.
It happened at Whiskey West on a seemingly quiet Sunday dinner. While the suspect was quickly arrested, the restaurant remains boarded and patrons are still rattled.
“Yeah, it’s the guy in the window just coming from the left,” said owner Colin Pickering while watching the video.
The peaceful evening quickly turned into a chaotic frenzy.
“This guy had a vengeance going,” Pickering said. “He was going for it.”
The suspect in his early 20s was seen hurling not one or two but three rocks through the window front of Whiskey West.
LaFayette was working behind the bar at the time
“As soon as I saw the glass, I just started screaming, ‘Everybody get down and duck down behind the bar,’” she said.
A coworker called the police right away. A few customers were hurt from the shattered glass and from trying to dodge to safety.
“One lady ran so fast she got stuck in the little nook area she had to jump the banister and sustained some injuries to her ankle,” Lafayette explained.
A couple regulars went after the suspect, who was seen crawling into a window of an apartment across the street.
He was arrested and taken into custody.
“We don’t expect it in a neighborhood bar,” Pickering said. “We put up with it downtown. It’s cost us doing the job downtown – not in a nice neighborhood like West Seattle.”
But Angela Cough, also a business owner in West Seattle, says crimes like this are going up.
“That’s actually been happening quite a bit,” she said. ”It’s happened quite a bit in the West Seattle junction.”
She’s part of the area’s business watch and says, now more than ever, business owners need to keep lines of communication open.
“We’re considered an urban village,” Cough explained. “We’re going to be a hub for the city. We’re starting to see what that could potentially look like without additional help.”
Police say the suspect is expected to face charges for the property damage as well as for the people the injured inside.
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