Seattle, WA
Another harrowing escape puts attention on open prostitution market along Seattle’s Aurora Avenue
SEATTLE (AP) — A vanload of church volunteers drove along a main street in north Seattle one night last month with sandwiches, water bottles and blankets for homeless people. They didn’t find any — but they did see dozens of barely clothed women walking along the road or leaning into traffic to advertise their services.
“Just woman after woman after woman,” recalled one of the volunteers, Stuart Jenner. “We prayed for them as we drove south.”
About two hours later, the FBI said, a man posing as an undercover police officer shackled and abducted a woman from the area after soliciting her to engage in prostitution. He then drove her hundreds of miles to his home in southern Oregon, where he locked her in a makeshift cell in his garage — a cinder block cage with a metal door, charging papers say. She escaped by punching the door, bloodying her knuckles, until it broke.
Authorities say they are looking for more possible victims after linking the man, Negasi Zuberi, to violent sexual assaults in at least four other states. His newly appointed public defender, Devin Huseby, declined to comment Thursday.
The July 15 abduction is one of at least three cases in the past year in which police say women engaged in prostitution along Aurora Avenue had to make harrowing escapes or otherwise be rescued after being held against their will, and it raised questions about the consequences of tolerating an open sex market along the busy thoroughfare.
“The Aurora Avenue North corridor has been a longstanding public safety challenge with human trafficking, street prostitution, drug dealing, and gun violence,” Jamie Housen, a spokesperson for Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, said in an email.
Seattle has been clamping down, Housen said. Police regularly make arrests in the area and issued nuisance notices last week to two budget motels on Aurora that authorities said were hotbeds of prostitution and other crime.
Aurora, an urban highway also known as State Route 99, is one of the city’s main north-south arterials. Especially known for prostitution is a stretch of about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) close to the city’s northern limit that is flanked by home-improvement stores, single-story businesses, strip malls and cheap motels.
Residents have noticed a dramatic increase in the activity since the pandemic struck in 2020, as the Seattle Police Department has contended with a severe shortage of officers.
That was also the year the City Council eliminated loitering crimes as they relate to drug trafficking and prostitution. Loitering charges were rarely filed anyway, but the council cited the racist history of such laws, which were preceded by Jim Crow-era vagrancy statutes designed to target formerly enslaved people, in eliminating them.
Last November, a 20-year-old woman who had been trafficked along Aurora tried to escape her pimp by jumping nearly naked out of the third-floor window of a home in south Seattle where she’d been kept. The escape failed, and after the pimp drove her back up to Aurora, she tried again, this time running from him and sitting topless in the roadway. A rideshare driver stopped and rescued her — and then engaged in a rolling gunfight with the pimp, who chased them in his car, police said.
The defendant in that case, Winston Burt, was arrested soon after and now faces federal sex trafficking and gun charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
Last month, a 19-year-old man and 17-year-old boy were charged with trafficking two young women out of one of the motels on Aurora, after one of the women called her father to report she was being held against her will.
The city followed up by declaring the Emerald Motel and the Seattle Inn to be chronic nuisances. The declaration requires the owners to submit a plan explaining how they will prevent their properties from being used for criminal behavior, Housen said. Failure to comply can result in fines.
Calls to those establishments seeking comment did not go through Thursday, with an automated message saying the lines were busy.
“Human trafficking takes a tragic, significant, and unacceptable toll on victims and the entire community,” Housen said. “Mayor Harrell recognizes that addressing this issue requires more than just law enforcement, including a special emphasis on victim services, support, and advocacy.”
Cory Cocktail, the co-founder of the Seattle sex worker outreach organization Green Light Project, said sex work is inherently risky, but outdoor work is especially dangerous because of the difficulty in vetting clients. The closing of the motels to prostitution could make it even worse, he said, because workers might be more likely to resort to getting into clients’ cars instead.
And without a consolidated community based around the motels, it would be harder for sex workers to look out for each other, Cocktail said.
“I unfortunately have been expecting something like this to happen,” Cocktail said. “I hate saying that out loud, but the circumstances being what they are, predators are empowered to hurt people right now.”
For Jenner, who volunteered through his church, University Presbyterian, for a late-night shift with the Union Gospel Mission’s “Search and Rescue Program” on July 14, learning that an abduction had occurred just hours later reminded him of Gary Ridgway, the Green River serial killer, who terrorized the region in the 1980s. Ridgway picked up some of his victims, many of them sex workers, along the same stretch of Aurora.
One of Ridgway’s victims, Mary Bridgett Meehan, 19, was a classmate of Jenner.
“My fervent hope is that this story can help someone to do something about all the prostitution that is on northern Aurora Avenue in Seattle,” Jenner wrote in an email to elected officials Wednesday.
___
Manuel Valdes in Seattle contributed.
Spooning buttercream into a pastry bag, Kim Holloway is close to opening time. She pipes rosettes of frosting on trays of vanilla cupcakes—some plain vanilla frosting, some cookies and cream.
With the aid of Holloway’s “partner in crime,” Kathleen Dickenson, they prop the lid of an old-fashioned school desk in Holloway’s front yard and fill it with cupcakes. Holloway adds edible pearls and glitter. Shortly after 3 p.m., the Little Free Bakery Phinneywood is open for business—the business of sharing.
“I love to bake, and many people have told me, ‘Oh, you should open a bakery.’ And I just think, ‘No, no, no, no. It would take the joy out of it for me,” Holloway says.
“To me, the seed library is part of food security. It’s like having money in the bank, but it’s seeds in the library.”
Like hundreds of other Little Free hosts in the region, she’s found joy instead in giving.
And, like so many good ideas, this one started with a book.
In 2009, a Wisconsin man named Todd Bol built a Little Free Library in his front yard, encouraging passersby to take a free book or drop off extras. The idea and the format—a wooden box set on a post, usually with a latched door—seeded a movement, with more than 150,000 registered worldwide.
“Seeded” got literal fast: The Little Free book idea spread to other sharing opportunities, including a rampant crop of Little Free Seed Libraries, where people swap extra packets of cilantro and Sungolds.
Seattle’s density, temperate climate, walkable neighborhoods—and maybe our introvert culture?—make it easy for the little landmarks to thrive. They exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, when locals thought outside the box by putting up a box, including what’s believed to be the nation’s first Little Free Bakery and first Little Free Art Library. Many built on the region’s existing affinity for hyperlocal giving—the global Buy Nothing phenomenon, for one example, was founded on Bainbridge Island.
“We just seem to do more of all these versions of sharing,” says “Little Library Guy,” the nom de plume of a longtime resident who showcases the phenomenon on his Instagram feed and a helpful map.
The nonprofit organization now overseeing global Little Free Libraries finds the nonbook knockoffs “fun and flattering,” communications director Margret Aldrich says in an email. (She also notes “Little Free Library” is a trademarked name, requiring permission if used for money or “in an organized way.”)
Some libraries stress fundamental needs: A recently established Little Free Failure of Capitalism in South Seattle provides feminine products, soap, chargers, even Narcan. A Columbia City Little Free Pantry established by personal chef Molly Harmon grew into a statewide network for neighbors supporting neighbors.
Others are about the little things: Yarn. Jigsaw puzzles and children’s toys. Keychains (one keychain library in Hillman City has a TikTok account delighting 8,000+ followers). A Little Free Nerd Library holds Rubik’s Cubes and comic books.
Regardless of where each library falls on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they stand on common ground. “There’s a line from [Khalil] Gibran: ‘Work is love made visible,’ ” Little Library Guy says in a phone call. “That’s what they’re doing. They’re showing that they love the community by doing something for them.”
Here’s a little free sample of what you might find around town:
Seeding a Movement
Two University of Washington students sort, count, and bag mammoth sunflower seeds during an annual seed inventory inside a research facility at the Center for Urban Horticulture. These are seeds that birds at the UW Farm did not get to, and they’ll go into the Little Free Seed Library by the end of the day. (Photo credit: Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times)
At the UW Farm, on 1.5 acres of intensively planted land at the Center for Urban Horticulture, students grow more than six tons of organic produce annually. They learn about agriculture and ecology while providing food for 90 families in a neighborhood CSA, for college dining halls and for food banks.
One chilly November day, students and volunteers on the self-sustaining farm worked with the small staff to inventory what seemed like countless seeds for next year’s plantings: Parade onions, Autumn Beauty sunflowers, Painted Mountain corn, Genovese basil. Packs with just a small number of remaining seeds were set aside for the Little Free Seed Library installed near rows of winter greens.
Farm manager Perry Acworth organized the little library during the pandemic, seeing the renaissance in home gardening coupled with a run on supplies. “Seeds were sold out … even if they had money, they couldn’t find them,” she says.
Acworth picked up a secondhand cabinet—one with a solid door, rather than the usual Little Free Library glass window, because seeds need to be protected from light. Althea Ericksen, a student at the time, designed it, painted it with a cheerful anthropomorphic beet, and installed it.
Seeds were packed inside jars to protect them from rodents and birds who otherwise would have a feast, and the Little Free Seed Library was born—shielded from rain and direct sun, convenient to pedestrians as well as cars.
On a recent day, seeds for radish, mizuna, red cabbage, and flashy troutback lettuce waited in lidded jars for their new winter homes.
On the side of the seed library, thank you notes sprout comments such as, “Thank you for sharing.” Enough harvests have gone by to see the library’s benefits, from flowering pollinators to harvests of food. A mere handful of seeds isn’t useful for the farm’s scale, Acworth notes, but for library guests, “If I have five sunflowers in my yard, five heads of lettuce, that’s great.”
It isn’t all sunflowers and appreciation. The library has been emptied more than once; the seeds were once dumped out and used to fuel a fire on the ground.
Seattle, WA
Video: Jordan Babineaux on the #Seahawks: “EVERYBODY'S on the Hot Seat” | Seattle Sports – Seattle Sports
Seahawks Legend Jordan Babineaux joins hosts Dave Wyman and Bob Stelton to discuss the future of the Seahawks. Babineaux shares his opinons on Geno Smith, DK Metcalf, John Schneider and more.
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0:00 Will Geno Smith be back?
5:01 Should Ryan Grubb have been fired?
7:24 Will DK Metcalf be back?
9:27 Fixing O-line issues
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17:10 Is John Schneider on the Hot Seat?
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Seattle weather: Cooler, but drier, week ahead
FOX 13 Meteorologist Ilona McCauley has your 7-day forecast.
SEATTLE – Clouds cleared out this evening around Western Washington, and we got to enjoy a beautiful view of the mountain today! We will likely be seeing more of Mount Rainier in the coming days as the morning fog burns off, and we get more sunbreaks.
Clouds cleared out as we got to enjoy a beautiful sunset over the skyline this evening.
A ridge of high pressure will build in beginning today, bringing a quiet, stable pattern for the coming days. Clear nights and calm winds will lead to foggy mornings with low clouds forecast to break around 10am to 12pm each day.
Mostly clear skies this evening will allow for fog to develop by early Sunday morning.
Slightly cooler temperatures are forecast around Western Washington. Afternoon highs will warm to the low and mid 40s which is a little below the seasonable average.
A cooler day is forecast for Western Washington with temperatures forecast to be in the low 40s.
No big weather makers are in store for Western Washington in the upcoming week. Mornings will start off with fog which should burn off by the late morning hours. No significant chances for rain this week.
Foggy mornings with afternoon sunbreaks in the extended forecast.
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