SEATAC – A shooting outside a sports bar in SeaTac early Saturday left two people injured, including a woman with a gunshot wound and a man with stab wounds, police said.

According to the King County Sheriff’s Department, the fight happened outside The Best Damn Sports Bar II, located at 16234 Pacific Highway South.

Reports of the assault came in at approximately 2:30 a.m.

No description of the suspect was given, and police say he is still on the loose.

SOURCE:

• KING-TV

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SEATAC – A Pierce County boy who got in trouble last year when he stole a car, got caught, then snuck onto a flight from SeaTac to Phoenix to San Antonio is back in the news again after being arrested after trying to board another flight Tuesday.

The Transportation Security Administration claims that Semaj Booker was captured at a gate at SeaTac Airport after he failed to show a boarding pass.

Surveillance video shows Booker passed through the central checkpoint security area without any problems, but it’s still not clear how he managed to get through without a boarding pass. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it became a requirement to have a ticket when passing through security.

A TSA spokesperson says Booker was trying to board a Southwest Airlines flight, but it’s not immediately clear where he was trying to go or where in the airport he was finally caught.

The boy is back in his mother’s custody. A Tacoma Police spokesperson says his mother reported him missing at 3 a.m.

The TSA says it believes checks and balances are place to make the airport secure, but it will be reviewing security protocol.

In January 2007, then 9-year-old Semaj Booker got through airport security, boarded another Southwest Airlines flight by passing himself off as a 12-year-old whose mother was waiting for him in the boarding area. His information matched a paid ticketless reservation for the flight so agents gave him a boarding pass.

The boy’s mother said then he disliked the Lakewood neighborhood where the family lived and wanted to be with his grandfather in Dallas.

Before his odyssey last year, Booker was arrested after leading police on chase on Highway 512 at speeds up to 90 mph, finally ending in a crash. Once he was released back to his family, he ran away for his cross-country trip until his capture in Texas.

He was charged with car theft, attempting to elude a pursing police vehicle and driving without a license.

SOURCE:

• KING-TV

Danny Westneat of The Seattle Times has an interesting column about a recent, unusual security breach at SeaTac Airport.

This one did not involve any fluids over four ounces however; rather, it’s a story about a van driven right onto the tarmac by a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army named Greg Alderete.

An excerpt:

So when he realized he had driven a van onto a runway tarmac at Sea-Tac airport — and that no one had asked his name, checked his ID or searched his vehicle — well, he just about lost it.

“I was appalled,” Alderete says. “If you go in the airport’s front door, they take away your tube of toothpaste. But the back door? That’s the weakest security of any critical facility I’ve ever seen.”

“We were sitting there, the engine idling, nobody around, when all of a sudden I realized: We’re out on the goddamn runway,” Alderete recalled. “We’re in a gassed-up, seven-passenger van, and no one really knows who we are. We have an unobstructed path to the main runways, the commercial gates, the whole place. It was unbelievable.”

Full story here.

SEATAC – Autopsy results indicate that the imprisoned director of a Thai museum in Bangkok died of natural causes at the SeaTac Detention Center (first reported here).

According to a spokeswoman for the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, Roxanna Brown passed away from “peritonitis,” an infection caused by a perforated gastric ulcer.

The 62-year-old Brown, a U.S. citizen, died around 2:30am Wednesday while being held for further investigation.

Brown was the director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University in Thailand. Investigators accused her of allowing collectors to overstate the value of art donated to several Southern California museums and claim tax deductions.

Authorities arrested Brown last week while she was in Seattle visiting relatives. She was charged with one count of wire fraud.

Maggie Ogden, a spokeswoman for the Federal Detention Center, said Brown was booked May 9.

She said all inmates coming into the facility are screened by medical staff, but she declined to speak specifically about Brown’s case.

Brown’s death is under investigation, she said.

SOURCE:

• Seattle P-I

SEATAC – A renowned Asian antiquities expert, indicted in Los Angeles in connection with a federal investigation into illegal trafficking of pilfered Southeast Asian art, has died in custody at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac.

Roxanna Brown, the director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University in Thailand, was found dead around 2:30 a.m., said FDC spokeswoman Maggie Ogden.

Brown was arrested at her hotel last Friday as she prepared to have dinner with colleagues from the University of Washington, where she was scheduled to speak Saturday, according to news reports.

Ogden said the cause of Brown’s death is under investigation. Brown had complained of being ill after her arrest and her scheduled appearance before a U.S. magistrate Monday was postponed because she didn’t feel well. Emily Langlie, the spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle, said Brown was able to appear in court Tuesday and that her extradition to Los Angeles to answer the charges was pending.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Johns, the Los Angeles prosecutor heading the illegal antiquities investigation, said Brown was “one of many targets” of the probe. He declined to say how her death would affect the investigation.

Brown, 62, who lived in Bangkok, was indicted on a single count of wire fraud for allegedly allowing her electronic signature to be used on appraisal forms of items donated to museums. Those appraisals, according to court documents, were inflated so that the donors could claim fraudulent tax deductions.

SOURCE:

• The Seattle Times