Seattle police recovered a modified machine gun and an untraceable “ghost gun” from the scene of a mass shooting that occurred during a three-day food festival at Seattle Center, near the Space Needle, this past weekend. The shooting left three people dead—including one of the suspects—and at least five others wounded, police chief Shon Barnes said on Tuesday, July 28, 2026.

The incident involved at least three suspects. Nineteen-year-old Junior Cee Niko Semo died at the scene. A 15-year-old suspect was disarmed and arrested on-site, with police seizing a 9mm ghost gun assembled from a parts kit made by the now-defunct company Polymer80. Ghost guns, which are unserialized firearms assembled from kits, were legal under federal law until 2022, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began regulating them as firearms.

Two individuals uninvolved in the shooting were also killed: 44-year-old Carlos Israel Sanchez Villalba and 56-year-old Ashley Whitehead. Police are still investigating and trying to locate a person who arrived at a nearby hospital with a possible gunshot wound, though it has not been confirmed if this individual was a victim of the shooting.

Chief Barnes indicated that at least one more suspect remains at large and that there may be multiple suspects still unaccounted for.

Sources