Three days after police shot and arrested Christopher J Monfort for allegedly murdering officer Timothy Brenton on Halloween, police appear to know who did it, how the attack was carried out, where Monfort spent his days leading up to and after the shooting, and when his plans started to take shape. But it still appears that police don’t know precisely why it happened.
At a press conference at SPD headquarters this afternoon, the department released a flurry of information about their suspect, and showed a video of the last known encounter between Seattle police and Christopher Monfort, two weeks before he allegedly pulled up alongside of Officer Brenton and Officer Britt Sweeney’s patrol car on Halloween, and opened fire.
In the video, recorded on a patrol car dash cam, police follow Monfort—driving a green Crown Victoria, possibly a decommissioned law enforcement vehicle—through the Central District on October 15th, a half-dozen blocks from where Officer Brenton was shot and killed two weeks later. Assistant Chief Jim Pugel says officers spotted Monfort driving near 31st and Yesler——he looked “lost,” Pugel says—and pulled him over after he failed to use his turn signal. When officers stopped him, they also found that he had no proof of insurance. Police cited Monfort and sent him on his way.
It’s not yet clear what Monfort was doing in the Central District, miles from his Tukwila home, and so close to where Officer Brenton would eventually be murdered. Was he getting a look at the neighborhood, planning his escape route? Was this traffic stop the last straw for Monfort that allegedly led him to choose the area as a hunting ground?
Police still haven’t said anything about the significance of the encounter, but one week later, on October 22nd, patrols cars arrived to a city maintenance center to find a mobile precinct vehicle engulfed in flames. This, police say, was Monfort’s first attempt to kill Seattle police officers. At the scene, a maintenance worker told officers that a suspicious man was somewhere near the facility, and officers drove off to find him. Minutes later, when they drove back to talk to the worker, three patrol cars parked at the facility exploded. Pugel says officers were almost killed in the blast. “The [bombing of the] Mobile Precinct was the bait to get them in there,” he said.
Near the scene of the bombing, officers found a military style knife, an American flag, and a plastic screw top, along with a note threatening the lives of officers. According to Pugel, the note was a bit baffling to police as it was written in past tense, stating “the funerals were because,” leading police to believe he had planned to kill officers in the bombing. The note also mentioned grievances against “bad officers,” Pugel says.Police have since matched DNA found at the Charles Street bombing with evidence found at the site of the shooting.
One week after the bombing, Pugel says witnesses in the Central District spotted a white vehicle—originally believed to be a Toyota—following a patrol car in the neighborhood. When officers Brenton and Sweeney pulled another car over for a traffic stop, the white car following them pulled into a parking lot, turned off its lights, and waited. After the traffic stop, as Sweeney and Brenton moved 
along, the white car followed. Witnesses told police “it looked like the [person in the] white car was preparing to do a drive by,” Pugel says. Minutes later, police now say Monfort pulled alongside officers Brenton and Sweeney, boxing them in, and opened fire on them from point-blank range with an assault rifle.
Near the scene of the shooting, police found an American flag handkerchief or bandana, just as they had at the site of the Charles Street bombing. In the following week, police called in the help of the FBI’s behavioral science unit, which put together a profile of the shooter, which bears an uncanny resemblance to what we now know about Monfort, a loner obsessed with social justice and law enforcement.Police were also able to identify the vehicle used in the shooting—an old, rare Datsun—from patrol car camera footage, including video taken from Sweeney and Brenton’s patrol car five minutes before Brenton was murdered.
By November 6th, the day of Brenton’s memorial, police had matched DNA evidence from the shooting and bombing scenes. That day at noon, they also received a tip about a car matching the Datsun’s description, which was parked at an apartment complex in Tukwila. Several teams of detectives went to survey the scene, and encountered Monfort. Police say Monfort pulled a gun on detectives, aimed it at a sergeant’s head, and pulled the trigger. But the gun didn’t go off.
Police chased Monford, eventually catching up to him in a stairwell where he again pointed his gun at officers, police say, who opened fire. Monfort was rushed to Harborview while officers from several departments flooded the complex, evacuating units and sending in a robot to search Monfort’s apartment. Inside, police found a booby-trapped bomb connected to Monfort’s stove, a .223 caliber assault rifle—police say it is an “amalgamation of different guns—which is a “ballistic match” for the one used in Officer Brenton’s murder, along with bombs and bomb making equipment.
Police say Monfort had “rudimentary” or “a step above crude” bomb-making skills, strapping propane tanks strapped to plastic bottles of accelerant and shrapnel to make his bombs. However, Pugel says it appears that Monfort was “trying to improve” his skills. At the apartment, Police also found that Monfort’s Datsun had a bullet hole in it, which the department believes was left when officer Sweeney returned fire. 
We now know that Monfort was deeply interested in government and social justice issues—like police misconduct, jury nullification, and the loss of rights under the Patriot Act—but it’s still unclear what allegedly drove Monfort to make the leap from being a loner college student interested in policing and justice to, as police have said, a “terrorist.”
So far, it sounds quite a bit like Monfort saw himself as an anti-government patriot akin to Timothy McVeigh. The American flags left at the two scenes, his alleged manifesto written to police, and the numerous college paper articles and school projects all seem to indicate that Monfort believed our government, or at least law enforcement system, was fundamentally flawed or broken.
In the coming weeks we’ll find out more about Monfort, what made him tick, and hopefully, what (allegedly) pushed him over the edge.
