A 15-year-old arrested following a deadly shootout at a crowded food festival near Seattle’s Space Needle was carrying a ghost gun equipped with an extended magazine, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes announced at a news conference Tuesday. The weapon, a 9 mm pistol manufactured from parts made by Polymer80 — a now-defunct company that was once among the leading suppliers of ghost gun components in the United States — underscores the continued threat posed by untraceable, privately assembled firearms in public spaces.
Investigators recovered two additional weapons at the scene, along with 14 shell casings fired from weapons of at least two different calibers, Barnes said. The physical evidence paints a picture of a chaotic, multi-shooter confrontation in a densely populated public space. Police now believe at least three suspects were involved in the exchange of gunfire, a revision upward from the two suspects authorities initially identified. One of those suspects died at the scene.
Court documents filed in Seattle’s juvenile court identified the three parties as the arrested 15-year-old, an acquaintance who was killed during the violence, and what investigators described as “at least one other unknown suspect.” That third shooter remains unidentified and at large, a fact that will sustain pressure on investigators as the case develops. The shooting took place over the weekend at a food festival held near one of Seattle’s most iconic and heavily visited landmarks.
Ghost guns — privately made firearms that lack serial numbers and are frequently acquired without a background check — sit at the center of a long-running and unresolved policy failure. Law enforcement agencies across the country have documented a sharp rise in ghost gun recoveries at violent crime scenes, a direct consequence of years in which federal regulation of these weapons lagged far behind their proliferation. The Biden administration moved in 2022 to tighten rules requiring serial numbers on ghost gun kits, but enforcement gaps and the sheer volume of parts already in circulation have blunted the impact of that rule.
Polymer80, the Nevada-based company whose parts kit was used to assemble the weapon recovered from the teenager, ceased operations after years of legal battles with federal regulators and state attorneys general over the sale of its so-called “buy, build, shoot” kits. Those kits allowed buyers to assemble functional, untraceable handguns at home — often with no background check required. The company’s collapse did not, however, remove the tens of thousands of Polymer80-based firearms already assembled and circulating in communities across the country, a grim reminder that market exits do not undo the damage already done by lax oversight.
The investigation remains active. Seattle police have not announced additional arrests in connection with the unidentified third suspect, and the full circumstances surrounding the shootout — including what triggered the exchange of gunfire at a public food festival — have not yet been publicly established.