Seattle

Police announced Dec. 23 that the case was being investigated as a homicide after receiving the medical examiner’s report.

According to court documents, the husband told detectives he and Sabbineni were married June 5, 2025, in an arranged marriage and moved in together in July.

He told detectives he had left the apartment on Oct. 27 to pick up medicine and go to Cold Stone Creamery before returning home.

Investigators later reviewed SmartRent data from the apartment’s electronic door lock and wrote that no one entered the apartment during the 37 minutes he was away.

The same records showed he returned at 6:53 p.m., stayed in the apartment for about 17 minutes, then left at 7:10 p.m., according to the document.

Detectives wrote that the bathroom door could be locked by turning the knob and closing the door, meaning someone could have locked it after Sabbineni was inside.

Investigators also wrote that the husband had a secret romantic relationship with another woman in India and continued communicating with her after his marriage.

Detectives said he did not disclose calls with that woman during his first interview, including calls around the time he said he was trying to get help for the locked bathroom door.

During a later interview with police, detectives confronted the husband about what they described as inconsistencies between his earlier statements and evidence gathered in the investigation.

According to the court document, the woman detectives said he had been communicating with called his cellphone toward the end of that interview.

The court document also describes messages in which Sabbineni complained multiple times about drinks tasting bitter. On the day she died, detectives wrote, she told the husband a smoothie he made tasted like “medicine” and “cough syrup.”

Bellevue police said they do not believe there is an ongoing threat to the public.

A Bellevue man accused of stabbing and killing University of Washington student Juniper Blessing will receive mental health treatment at Western State Hospital after an evaluator found he is not competent to stand trial.

Christopher Leahy, 31, has not entered a plea in his first-degree premeditated murder case and his arraignment was pushed several times to evaluate his competency. On Monday, King County Superior Court Judge Joe Campagna adopted findings from a state psychiatric evaluator that support Leahy is incompetent, meaning he is not able to understand the nature of the proceedings or aid his attorney in his defense.

Leahy was charged with premeditated murder after he allegedly stabbed Blessing more than 40 times in the laundry room of her off-campus apartment complex, Nordheim Court, on May 10. Authorities do not believe the stabbing of Blessing, a transgender woman, was a hate crime.

The 31-year-old allegedly stalked another female student and resident of Nordheim Court and returned to the neighborhood two days after Blessing was killed.

When someone is found “incompetent,” the state is required to offer them short-term treatment — typically a combination of legal education and psychiatric medication — in an effort to restore their competency. If the defendant ultimately cannot be found competent, the charges are dismissed and a civil process to commit them to mental healthcare might begin.

After a brief stint in “competency restoration,” it’s possible that Leahy could be sent back to jail to proceed through the criminal system.

Voters in Washington and a dozen other states can continue counting ballots received after Election Day.

In a 5-4 ruling announced Monday morning, Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in upholding a Mississippi election law that allows ballots received by mail up to five days after Election Day to be counted as long as they were postmarked on or before Election Day.

The ruling means that there will not be a change to the deadline to submit ballots in Washington.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/51469511

The loss of tree canopy at Sand Point was so extreme that Theo Hoss, a natural resources graduate student at Oregon State University, noticed it as part of his master's capstone project. Hoss was using the city's own light detection and ranging technology to look at changes in the tree canopy between 2016 to 2021.

He found that 94% of the 255 acres of tree canopy lost during that five-year period was from parcels that applied for development permits. Developers were basically clearing lots to build new homes, offices, apartment buildings, and condos.

But the 88-acre Sand Point parcel was an outlier. The club had applied for no development permit but accounted for 5.7 acres of the lost tree canopy.

"What we're seeing with Sand Point is a truly significant net canopy loss over that five-year period in absence of new construction to explain it," Hoss said. "It's actually the fifth highest canopy loss on any single parcel in the city that wasn't subject to redevelopment."

The Iran Football Federation wants FIFA to prevent any “ceremonies or promotional activities” in support of the LGBTQ+ community at a much discussed “Pride Match” between Egypt and Iran on Friday in Seattle, as well as restricting symbols or representations of the Pride movement at Lumen Field.

Since Seattle was confirmed to have a June 26 World Cup fixture, the city’s host committee has been preparing activations to mark the occasion, with the match at Lumen Field fixed as Egypt vs. Iran following the draw last December. The Seattle FWC26 committee’s website has a page dedicated to the Pride Matchday and it is holding a Pride Match Day press briefing on Thursday.

FIFA told The Athletic on Wednesday it is permitting rainbow flags at all of its World Cup matches this summer.

The driver was issued a ticket (around $300) for second-degree negligent driving, WSP said.

King County is hurtling toward a major demographic milestone. According to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau, we are just a hair’s breadth from crossing the threshold.

As of July 1, 2025, non-Hispanic white residents made up exactly 50.1% of King County’s population, putting the county on the verge of having no single racial or ethnic majority group for the first time.

It’s a remarkable shift over a relatively short period. In 2020, the county was more than 55% white. That figure has dropped by more than 1 percentage point on average each year since. If current trends hold, King County will officially have no racial/ethnic majority in next year’s census data release.

Thirty-eight of Washington’s 39 counties had a single racial/ethnic majority in 2025. Nearly all were majority non-Hispanic white, but three — Adams, Franklin and Yakima — were majority Hispanic. And only one — Grant County in Central Washington, where Moses Lake is located — already had no racial/ethnic majority group. In this largely agricultural county, non-Hispanic white people made up around 48% of the population, and Hispanic people 46%. All other groups made up only around 6%.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association estimates that of approximately 250,000 student athletes, between five and ten of them are transgender girls competing in sports. That is, at most, 0.004 percent of the student athlete population.

This November, voters will decide whether the state should subject all student athletes to genital exams to prevent the 0.004 percent from competing.

IL26-638, which qualified for the November ballot after Let's Go Washington gathered the required signatures, would prohibit students designated male at birth from competing in female-designated interscholastic sports. To enforce that prohibition, every student who wants to participate in a female-designated sport must provide a signed statement from their personal health care provider verifying their biological sex. That verification may come from a genetic test, a testosterone test, or - most likely - a genital exam.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/politics/p/833864/postal-service-skips-hearing-with-wa-lawmakers-on-mail-in-ballot-rules

U.S. Postal Service officials were set to meet publicly with Washington state lawmakers Monday as the agency considers a sweeping rule change to add federal oversight to mail-in voting.

But the Postal Service representatives canceled just hours before they were set to appear before a state House panel, said the committee’s chair, Rep. Sharlett Mena, D-Tacoma. Mena said the federal officials stated they’d “improperly confirmed” participation in the meeting.

The Postal Service acknowledged an inquiry about the situation from the Standard, but didn’t immediately provide comment.

The rule proposed this month would require state election officials to share with the Postal Service a list of mail-in voters. It also sets new conditions for states to send ballots via mail, including design of the envelopes.

“States would retain full control over who would (or would not) be able to vote by mail in federal elections within each state,” the rule says.

This is the latest in Trump’s long-running crusade against mail-in ballots.

Democrats, who in other states more often vote by mail than Republicans, see it as an intrusion on elections, which are run by states. Critics of the plan also say adopting the changes so close to the November elections could cause chaos.

Proponents of the new rule say it would help improve integrity and trust in elections.

There’s no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Washington.

The Washington Legislature established vote-by-mail as an option for all elections in 2005. By 2011, 38 of 39 counties in the state had switched to this system, and the Legislature adopted it as a statewide requirement.

Secretary of State Steve Hobbs called the new federal proposal “an unnecessary rule” that “does nothing to provide security in our elections.”

“Once again, we’re seeing federal overreach that threatens to undermine the rights of eligible voters and override states’ authority over elections,” Hobbs said in a statement earlier this month. “This is clearly another attempt by the Trump administration to exercise authority they don’t have.”

According to the charges filed against him, Arnold was dating a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy until she broke up with him in January. They continued to text each other about the relationship and subsequent break up for a couple weeks before she told him in early February to leave her alone, the charges say.

On Valentine’s Day, Arnold texted the woman and made a comment about her going on a date with someone new, and she in turn blocked Arnold’s phone number, charging papers say.

Two days later, the woman found a typed, two-page letter taped to her front door that referenced her relationship with Arnold and was signed, “You know who it is,” according to the charges. She reviewed footage from her front door camera and saw Arnold, armed and in uniform, drive to her home in his patrol vehicle and tape the letter to her door, the charges say.

Seeing the footage made her “very uncomfortable” because Arnold had previously told her “he would kill anyone who took his law enforcement career from him,” charging papers say.

I've never seen the link that full before. From South shoreline to the stadium exit it started as standing room only and it ended in sardines jam-packed.

It's both cool and also cool. As I contorted to see out the window towards the 5....under the tall guy's armpit hairs a couple of noses, several boobs and receding hairlines....the cars were barely slightly faster until they hit the usual traffic wall. There, that's when I felt like it was a good lol time. Screw cars.

I was only slightly afraid of falling through a safety door. But it's not manufactured by Boeing so, it was all good. We got out and the mass of people just walked together to the phone stadium. Motorola? Huawei? You know that pink stadium you usually see off the distance from the 5. It was a nice exercise for the riders. I felt like a little ant in the middle of an active attack. It was funny that we still obayed traffic signals.

It was worse on the way back home. But it totally beat having to park your car on a $50 per hour spot or whatever they charge for that now. I totally agree, cars need not drive there. 3,000lb of useless mass to carry a guy vs just hundreds and hundreds of people coating the street.

On the sides of the streets they setup tables selling water and snacks on the way in. On the way out they had the dinner tables... hotdogs and burgers and burritos and fries and a ton of other stuff like adobo chicken. No end of ad-hoc food stands. But unfortunately not a lot of people were stopping. Like me, they had one thing in their mind....GTFO! Sorry, but I just don't have extra income to spend. I also didn't want to go. My wife's family dragged us in. Neither my kids nor I follow baseball ⚾ or care one bit for it. But I still loved being in that one place at once with just a shit ton of other people. I even watched the Mariners win or lose or whatever. I was on the jumbotron and did the wave for like 10 times. I had a good time. Just don't have extra money to give out for anything. So getting home was the thing on my mind.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/62078979

The Seattle Art Museum officially has a large-scale union.

A large majority of workers, 94%, voted Wednesday to form the Seattle Art Museum Workers United. The vote was conducted by the National Labor Relations Board and included employees from all SAM locations: downtown, the Seattle Asian Art Museum and the Olympic Sculpture Park.

More than 100 Seattle Art Museum employees working across over 20 front- and back-end departments, including marketing, operations, visitor experience, curatorial, education, development and other departments, announced their intent to unionize last month. It was the latest effort in a movement of labor organizing at museums and fine art institutions around the country that has grown over the last six years.

That’s the map of the “stay out of the water” zone off Beach Drive, as specified by health authorities, one day after the King County Wastewater Treatment District reported a sewage leak they now tell us led to an estimated 13,000 gallons going into Puget Sound.

The Washington Department of Ecology said it has no inspection records for the failed tank.

“Other than the spill control and stormwater pollution prevention plans noted previously, the agency does not regulate white liquor tanks,” Andrew Wineke, the agency’s deputy communications director, wrote in an email.

The Washington Department of Labor and Industries, the state’s workplace-safety agency, said prior inspections at Nippon Dynawave, going back to 2016, focused on other safety issues.

Reviewing structural inspection, maintenance, engineering or hazard-assessment records for the failed tank “would have been outside the scope of what we were there to look at,” L&I spokesperson Matt Ross wrote.

Ross said Nippon Dynawave still had a legal duty to address tank risks.

“State law in Washington requires every employer, including pulp and paper mills, to assess the unique hazards on their job site and make sure they are taking steps to address them to keep their workers safe on the job,” Ross wrote. “That includes tanks like this one.”

For those OOTL, this is in response to the real-world complaint letter from Bellevue owners

Won't someone think of the beachfront property boat owners!

Elected officials unanimously approved a yearlong moratorium on new data centers within Seattle city limits effective immediately at the city council meeting Tuesday, with a potential extension of about six months.

Seattle joins cities like Denver, CO, Baltimore, MD, Atlanta, GA and Minneapolis, MN, and at least three jurisdictions around the Puget Sound region that have passed similar legislation.

This summer, residents of Redmond, Bellevue, and Issaquah can apply to receive up to $2,000 off the purchase of a new e-bike.

https://www.redmond.gov/2537/E-Bike-Rebate-Program

https://bellevuewa.gov/city-government/departments/community-development/environmental-stewardship/transportation-electric-vehicles/pedal-forward-eastside

People from all three cities can apply from June 15 to June 29.

Recipients will be randomly selected.

To be notified when the application period opens, fill out this form