Seattle, WA
'Now an expectation': Volunteer group finds human remains in Seattle park
Members of the nonprofit organization We Heart Seattle found human remains in a public area within a wooded area in Seattle’s Lower Queen Anne neighborhood earlier this month.
The remains were found on Jan. 8 beneath the Aurora Bridge on an embankment on the north side of Dexter Avenue, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) announced this week. This was the second body found by the organization.
“Dexter Ave is our latest ‘archeological sight’ and we will clean up the rest of the skeletal remains and camp this Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m.,” Andrea Suarez, the founder and executive director of We Heart Seattle, told MyNorthwest. “We expect to find a missing skull under the collapsed camp.”
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What remained in the defunct encampment
Suarez described the area as an abandoned green space with artifacts of prior living that was years if not a decade or more old. Trees had fallen down over the years had been cut through to make space for makeshift forts and camps. We Heart Seattle staff even spotted trash with expiration dates dating back to 2018.
“Garbage several feet deep, thousands of needles, bottles of all kinds filled with urine, buckets and other makeshift toilets with human waste collected and eroded into the slope,” Suarez said when describing the former encampment.
No homeless person was living in the encampment during the time of We Heart Seattle’s cleanup.
“It is possible, now that it’s clean, that new campers would return,” Suarez said. “However, through community stewardship, we hope to activate it as an urban hiking trail and play space for dogs and children.”
We Heart Seattle is a nonprofit that prepares sites for trash and debris removal throughout the city, recruiting volunteers for trash cleanups. Many of the sites are defunct, abandoned or cleared-out encampments within public spaces. Between Oct. 2020 and Oct. 2023, the organization said it collected over a million pounds of garbage across approximately 300 cleanups. It added that more than 10,000 volunteer hours were logged to achieve this.
The nonprofit works alongside the city’s “Find it, Fix it” app to coordinate trash pickup. “Find It, Fix It” is a smartphone app offering mobile users one more way to report selected issues to the City of Seattle.
“We’ve found 12 (since 2020) by me or volunteers in Honey Buckets at Gilman Playfield, RVs in (Seattle neighborhoods) SoDo and Interbay, vans in SoDo, tents near stadiums in Beacon Hill, under stairs in Belltown, Queen Anne and Kinnear Park,” Suarez added. “It’s now an expectation when we scout a clean-up area before we bring volunteers in.”
Despite it being an expectation, Suarez noted this was the first time she or anyone within the organization found bones.
“This was the first body totally decomposed. (It had) been there for years, if not a decade,” Suarez said. “Several others had been passed away for weeks and in plain sight.”
We Heart Seattle staff immediately contacted SPD once they discovered the remains, who forwarded the case to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office for further investigation. The identity of the remains and the cause of death are still under investigation, as SPD confirmed to MyNorthwest.
Fears about Seattle’s public spaces confirmed
But this discovery only confirmed fears about the safety of public parks and spaces being unsafe within Seattle.
“Since We Heart Seattle cleaned and preserved more than 31 parks before Harrell and, through stewardship, those parks are safe,” Suarez said. “Kinnear Park is not safe at all. Urban hiking trails and ‘protected wetlands and trails,’ formally dirk bike trails or places to play, are still riddled with needles.”
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Seattle Parks and Recreation has struggled keeping the public spaces safe for all residents. On Dec. 27, the department, with support from the SPD, removed a makeshift garden dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement located in Cal Anderson Park. Parks and Recreation cited the garden became an unsafe place for all park users, noting recent incidents of vandalism of Cal Anderson public bathrooms, public drug use, unauthorized camping and a significant rodent problem, along with other issues.
“The city’s Unified Care Team also removed tent encampments that were located near the garden area and immediately outside the park along E Olive St. as part of ongoing efforts to keep public spaces clean, open and accessible to all,” Seattle Parks and Recreation wrote. “This is the 76th time the Unified Care Team has resolved encampments at Cal Anderson in 2023, which is one of the most frequently addressed areas in the city for repopulated encampments.”
But Suarez doesn’t want to hear people blame the government anymore.
“The voters have blood on their watch,” Suarez said. “Don’t blame the government. Blame a lack of civic engagement and voter education which is the third arm of We Heart Seattle.”
Suarez said the organization has adopted a new mantra: Voting is your superpower. In Nov. 2023’s general election, just slightly more than 500,000 ballots were returned out of nearly 1.4 million registered voters, or 37.9% — the lowest recorded since reliable voter registration counts began in 1936.
More on election turnout: 2023 King County election had lowest voter turnout in nearly 90 years
Frank Sumrall is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here and you can email him here.
CHICAGO (AP) — The struggling New York Mets placed former Seattle Mariners second baseman/designated hitter Jorge Polanco on the 10-day injured list on Saturday with a right wrist contusion.
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The move was made retroactive to Wednesday, a day after Polanco went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts in a 2-1 loss at the Los Angeles Dodgers. The 32-year-old Polanco is batting .179 (10 for 56) with a homer and two RBIs in his first season with New York, which has lost nine straight.
“When doctors first took a look at him, it looked like he got hit by a pitch when he didn’t,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “In talking to him, it was just a couple of swings that he took that night. … He didn’t think much of it, but just got worse the following day.
“So you just got to let it calm down a little bit and then we’ll go from there. But we don’t have a timetable for how long this is going to last.”
Polanco, who signed a two-year, $40 million contract with the Mets in December, also has been dealing with an ankle issue.
“He was trending in the right direction,” Mendoza said of the ankle injury. “It’s definitely going to help, obviously now with him being shut down. But the biggest thing now is that we’ve got to take care of that wrist.”
Polanco spent the previous two seasons with the Mariners, who acquired him in a February 2024 trade with the Minnesota Twins.
Polanco struggled during his first season with Seattle in 2024, hitting just .213 with 16 homers in 118 games while playing through a knee injury that didn’t become public knowledge until after the season.
But after the Mariners somewhat surprisingly brought him back for a one-year contract in 2025, Polanco rebounded to hit .265 with 26 homers and an .821 OPS in 138 games last season. He then added three homers during Seattle’s playoff run, along with a 15th-inning walkoff single in Game 5 of the American League Division Series that sent the Mariners to their first ALCS in 24 years.
Seattle Sports staff made additions to this post.
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Seattle, WA
Brandon Nimmo hits leadoff homer, Jacob deGrom works 4 scoreless as Rangers beat Seattle Mariners 5-0
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON – APRIL 17: Corey Seager #5 of the Texas Rangers tags out Dominic Canzone #8 of the Seattle Mariners during the fourth inning at T-Mobile Park on April 17, 2026 in Seattle, Washington. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
SEATTLE – Brandon Nimmo hit a leadoff home run, Jacob deGrom threw four shutout innings and Gavin Collyer earned his first career win as the Texas Rangers beat the Seattle Mariners 5-0 on Friday night.
Seattle lost its fourth straight game, and was shut out for the fourth time in 21 games, falling to 8-13. The Mariners were shut out six times during the 2025 season. Texas won its third straight game.
Nimmo led off the game with a 372-foot shot to right field off Mariners starter Logan Gilbert (1-3). It was Nimmo’s 16th career leadoff homer and second of the season. He also hit a leadoff home run on April 11 in a 6-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
DeGrom effectively maneuvered through Seattle’s lineup, and worked out of a one out, bases-loaded jam in the first inning. The two-time Cy Young Award winner recorded two of his three strikeouts after walking Josh Naylor to load the bases. Randy Arozarena fanned on a curveball, and Luke Raley swung through a fastball.
Texas added to its lead after Nimmo’s homer. Wyatt Langford’s single to left scored Corey Seager, who led off the third inning with a double. The Rangers stretched the lead to 3-0 on an RBI single from Jake Burger in the seventh.
The Mariners’ best scoring chance came in the sixth after Collyer (1-0), who worked 1 1/3 scoreless innings, left the game.
J.P. Crawford singled to left off Tyler Alexander with two out, and Mariners third base coach Carlos Cardoza sent Naylor from second base, but he was thrown out by Langford.
Texas added two more runs in the ninth on a sacrifice fly by Andrew McCutchen and an RBI double by Josh Jung.
Seattle third baseman Brendan Donovan left the game early due to a left hip issue.
Mariners right-hander Bryce Miller, who started the year on the injured list with a left oblique injury, was at T-Mobile Park for the first time this season. He will begin a rehab assignment with Triple-A Tacoma on Saturday.
Up next
Mariners RHP George Kirby (2-2, 3.25) will face Rangers righty Nathan Eovaldi (2-2, 5.40) on Saturday afternoon.
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FIFE, Wash. – A portion of southbound I-5 will be closed overnight in Fife Friday and Saturday night, according to WSDOT.
The Washington State Department of Transportation says the purpose of the closure is to install a new electronic sign and will need two nights to do it.
Crews will close southbound I-5 from 54th Avenue to Port of Tacoma Road starting at 11 p.m. Friday night until 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning. Closures will resume Saturday night starting at 11 p.m. as well, and lanes will reopen Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m.
WSDOT says the closure will include the 54th Avenue ramps to southbound I-5.
Detours for weekend I-5 closure in Fife, WA
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The Source: Information in this story comes from the Washington State Department of Transportation.
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