Holly MatkinSeattle, WA – Seattle police responding to a domestic violence call last Thursday arrived to find a decapitated woman’s body on the floor, and quickly came face-to-face with a knife-wielding attacker (video below).
Emergency dispatchers received the call at approximately 3:20 a.m., and heard someone yelling in the background, KIRO reported.
Because of a language barrier, a translator came in and replayed the call to obtain an address for the officers, who were ultimately dispatched to an apartment complex at Midvale Avenue North and Northgate Way five minutes later.
When Seattle police broke down the door to the third-floor apartment, they immediately encountered a decapitated woman’s body lying on the floor, The Seattle Times reported.
According to police, another woman and two children were also in the apartment.
A man in an adjacent room had a large knife clutched in his hand, bodycam footage showed.
“Get down! Get down!” the officers ordered. “Drop the knife!”
The suspect initially complied, and laid down onto his stomach.
“Her head is cut off,” one officer said with a tone of disbelief.
“Oh s–t,” another officer replied. “She’s got her head…cut off.”
The suspect began yelling something, but the officers were unable to understand him due to the language barrier.
They repeatedly ordered him to stay on the ground and begged him not to touch the knife, but the man ultimately stood up and grabbed the knife yet again.
The suspect yelled and waved the knife around, then swung the blade towards the officers.
“The suspect acted aggressively and gave the officers no choice but to fire their weapons to stop this threat,” the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) said in a statement, according to The Seattle Times.
The officers attempted to render lifesaving aid, but he died at the scene.
The second woman and the two children were uninjured.
The identities of the individuals involved in the encounter have not been released.
The Seattle Police Department has asked the King County Sheriff’s Office to handle the officer-involved shooting investigation.
“Early this morning two of our officers responded to a very dangerous domestic violence incident,” the police guild said in a statement to The Seattle Times. “After forcefully entering the apartment, the officers were faced with a horrific and [grisly] homicide crime scene.”
The situation forced the officers to make a “split-second decision to save the other people in the apartment, including children, as well as protect themselves from the actions of this suspect,” the statement read. “Very simply, these officers risked their lives to save others.”
The SPOG has been criticized for standing behind the officers while the investigation is still ongoing, but guild vice president Rich O’Neill said that the group is an independent organization with the freedom to stand up for whomever it chooses.
You can watch the officers’ encounter with the knife-wielding attacker in the video below: