A 21-year-old man was shot multiple times while attempting to intervene in an armed robbery at a street takeover in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, his family reported. Matthew Lanske was critically injured early on September 6 when a man and woman allegedly pulled a gun on his friend, Isaac Elijah Rios, 20. Shots were fired, fatally wounding Rios, and Lanske was shot twice in the stomach and once in the pelvis.
Despite his severe injuries, Lanske managed to reach a nearby convenience store seeking assistance. According to his mother, Shanda Barney, store workers and bystanders present instead filmed him on their phones as he bled. "He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, 'Mom, they wouldn’t let me in. They locked the doors. I begged them to let me, and there was so much blood coming out of my stomach, I thought I was going to die,'" Barney told Fox 13 Seattle.
Lanske underwent multiple surgeries and awoke to learn his friend, Rios, had died. Rios was one of three people killed in the Belltown area within a 24-hour period. "What breaks my heart almost as much as the shooting itself is knowing that while my son was fighting for his life, people were standing around filming him, taking pictures instead of helping him," Barney added.
Rios' aunt recounted a similar account on a GoFundMe page created for funeral expenses, stating that the wounded men were filmed while fighting for their lives and that Rios was found on the sidewalk bleeding. Lanske's sister, Brooklynne Lanske, told KOMO News that her brother experiences survivor's guilt for not being able to save his friend.
Families of both victims are appealing for witnesses to come forward. Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case.