By Erica C. Barnett
D’Vonne Pickett, the owner of The Postman mailing and shipping store and in the Central District, was just 31 when he was shot and killed outside his store three years ago. His public memorial service, at Climate Pledge Arena, drew thousands of mourners. Among them was Mayor Bruce Harrell, who broke down as he described learning from his son that Pickett had been killed.
“What happened to D’Vonne— this happened time and time again when I was little boy in the CD, going to T.T. Minor, Meany, and Garfield,” Harrell said, naming his elementary, middle and high schools. “We have to do everything humanly possible to save our own community, because no one’s going to do it for us,” Harrell said. “We have to hold up the family. You don’t say, ‘What can I do?’ Do it.”
Three years after Pickett was kiled, his mother, Nicky Chappell, is planning an “angelversary” celebration of his life that will double as a fundraiser; his grave, at Lakeview Cemetery, still lacks a headstone. Despite Harrell’s comments about her family at the memorial, Chappell says the mayor didn’t acknowledge or speak to her at the event, and hasn’t reached out to her in the years since.
Over the past several weeks, PubliCola has spoken to the mothers of young men killed by gun violence who told us Harrell ignored their pleas for help during his years in office, reaching out to some of them only once he was running for reelection. We also spoke with Black business owners and advocates who are supporting Wilson because they’ve met with her and believe she’s willing to make a place for them at the table. Some wouldn’t go on the record, citing a fear of retribution if Harrell gets reelected. Others talked at length about their disappointment with a mayor they thought would stand up for their communities.
“Every time he starts talking, he talks about his roots, or ‘I grew up in the CD,’ ‘my family’ this and ‘my family’ that. That’s what he did at my son’s service and I didn’t like that,” Chappell said. “We’re not going to talk about you growing up in the CD or whatever schools you went to. My son’s service wasn’t for you to come here and talk about what you talk about on the news all the time.”
After the service, Chappell said, she reached out to the mayor’s office on social media and eventually secured a meeting, where she told him she was disappointed and hurt that he hadn’t reached out or offered help. “As the mother in a high-profile case, I think he should have done better with me. as as a mother. … We would have never talked if I hadn’t reached out to him about how he did me at my son’s service.”
“If he’s going to involve himself in situations like this, or these traumatic incidents, don’t come half-ass,” Chappell said.
Harrell is in a tough reelection battle against a challenger, Katie Wilson, who disagrees with him strongly on many major policies, from the decision to place surveillance cameras in neighborhoods around the city, including the Central District, to his support for putting police officers in schools— starting with his alma mater, Garfield High School.
In debates, Harrell has frequently tried to shut Wilson down by talking about his personal history as someone who grew up Black and biracial in the Central District; unlike Wilson, a white woman who grew up in upstate New York, “my parents weren’t college professors,” Harrell said at a recent forum.
“Race,” my colleague Marcus Harrison Green wrote in a powerful recent piece for the South Seattle Emerald, “has shadowed this race from the start.” Harrell has certainly used it, suggesting (falsely) that his white opponent “darkened” his skin on an Instagram post. (In fact, the post that gave Harrell’s skin an orange tint was created by a progressive group run primarily by people of color whose Black director called the claim “untrue and offensive.”)
At a press event to announce a housing reparations proposal, Harrell lashed out at critics, saying the people he sees on the streets are “people I grew up with. How dare they write that under this administration—which has, by the way, the most diverse set of leaders on the executive floor in our city’s history—how dare anyone question the compassion of this administration toward people who are underrepresented?”
Several mothers who lost their children to gun violence said they initially had high hopes for Harrell, but have spent the past four years trying in vain to get Harrell to listen to them and other women who struggle with grief, job loss, threats, and the financial burden of caring for grandchildren long after losing a child.
“What mothers go through in crisis is not a one-time opportunity—it’s ongoing, especially with gun violence,” said Donnitta Sinclair, whose son, Horace Lorenzo Anderson, was shot in the CHOP protest zone in 2020 and died at Harborview. Volunteer medics took Anderson to the hospital in a pickup truck as a Seattle Fire Department medic unit idled nearby.
Earlier this year, Sinclair and a group of about 20 other mothers who lost children to gun violence met for a healing circle that was coordinated by the nonprofit group RISE. About halfway through the event, they learned that a special guest would be arriving soon: Mayor Bruce Harrell. Several people who were present told PubliCola what happened next.
As a video of their children played in the background, Harrell walked in with his security and asked, “‘Do you guys want me to talk freely and keep it real?’ recalled Lonnisha Landry, whose son, 16-year-old Xavier Landry, was shot and killed in Auburn lsat July; Landry is currently petitioning the state to do advanced DNA testing on casings left at the scene of the murder, hoping they will help identify his killer. “We said, ‘Keep it real.’ And he was like, ‘Cut the cameras.'”
According to four accounts, a videographer who was filming the event turned off his camera and everyone put their phones away.
“He was just writing, kind of not paying attention—okay, that’s one thing,” Landry continued. “But then when he does get to talking, he wants to basically say, ‘I’m not one of you guys, I haven’t lost a child, but I am one of you guys because I grew up in the community. I went to Garfield and I knew Donnitta’s family and I remember when one of her uncles stole my father’s coat.’ And we were like, ‘What?'”
Sinclair confirmed that Harrell made the crack about the supposed coat incident, which would have occurred before she was born. It wasn’t the first time, she said. Harrell also mentioned it when they spoke shortly before his first election in 2021. At the time, Sinclair recalled, “I told him, ‘Mr. Harrell, I lost my son. I’m not really interested in no coat.”
After some heated back and forth with Sinclair, several people who were present recalled, Harrell slammed his hand on the table, told the women “I didn’t even want to come here,” and started walking toward the door. (Chappell, who was present, said she understood why he was mad: He and Sinclair don’t get along. On the other hand: Sinclair is a mother who lost her son; Harrell is, well, the mayor.) Landry said she asked Harrell to at least stay and talk to a woman who had been trying to meet with him for more than a year. “We’re kind of pleading and wanting him to hear us. It was cold.”
Keshia McGee, whose son, James Richardson (the hip-hop artist Tanaa Money) was shot and killed in 2019, said Harrell’s words about not wanting to be there “haunt me to this day. We finally got a chance to speak to him about our kids … and he told us he didn’t even want to come to our healing circle,” she said.
“The way he treated us was like we were little ants and he was the giant.”
It wasn’t the first time McGee had felt used by Harrell and people associated with the mayor. In 2023, Harrell held a “One Seattle Day of Remembrance for Gun Violence Victims” event but didn’t reach out to her to participate in the event itself. Instead, she said, she got an invitation to attend, which is how she found out the event would feature a slide show that included her son. (In fact, Richardson’s image was on the very first slide.)
“I said, ‘how dare you guys reach out to me to come to this event? You had my information all this time and you’ve never reached out to me before to ask me about my baby,” McGee said. By the time of the weekend retreat, “we were feeling like, ‘You’re on TV talking about our kids but never spent the time to talk to us, the mothers that carried these kids.'”
At the retreat, Harrell started speaking again, but was soon interrupted by a phone call from his daughter, which he took while still standing in front of the group. After hanging up, Sinclair recalled, “He’s grinning, laughing, saying ‘I’m glad she didn’t want no money.'” (Others who were there recounted the same story, although not everyone was offended he took the call). “I said, ‘I’m glad she’s okay and you could answer her,” Sinclair recalled. “We don’t get to answer our kids’ calls ever again.’ He said, ‘You don’t know what the hell she needed.'”
“If you were at a white meeting, you would have blocked [your phone],” Sinclair said, “but you’re here at a meeting of women of color, so you don’t.”
McGee, too, found it insulting that Harrell took his daughter’s call. “It didn’t matter why you picked up the phone. … When he was in that [televised] debate, up on the podium while millions of people were watching, I bet he had his phone off.”
Harrell’s appearance “shook up the whole room,” McGee said. They all came to heal together, “and we all left very hurt and upset and mad. Why the hell did he even come? This was supposed to be healing and then that man showed up.”
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PublCola sent Harrell’s campaign a list of 10 questions for this story. The campaign responded with the following statement: “Mayor Harrell is a champion for survivors of gun violence, and communities impacted by firearm tragedy. He is the first Mayor to hire an executive-level gun violence prevention coordinator (herself a survivor), and has the sole endorsement of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. Under Bruce’s leadership, Seattle has seen a reduction in shots fired, thousands of guns have been removed from our streets, and we are investing in proven community violence intervention and youth engagement programs. Bruce meets regularly with families and victims of gun violence, respects the need for privacy and intensity of grief often expressed in these meetings, and out of respect for all involved will not comment on specific meetings or interactions.”
Many of the women who lost children to gun violence said they want the city to fund opportunities for them to meet and support each other, from healing circles like the one Harrell attended, to a community center with services such as child care, support groups, and direct connections to emergency resources.
“I’m tired of calling 211 for help,” Chappell said. “There’s so much funding going into [programs] for gun violence—they just passed a policy the other day for more funds to help this problem—but how are you helping families? How about helping moms get into a position where they’re able to do some healing?”
Most of the women PubliCola spoke to said they’re supporting Wilson. So does Chiif Ahmed Mumin, director of the Seattle Rideshare Drivers Association. He believes that, unlike Harrell, she’ll aid in identifying the culprit in the 2022 shooting of Uber driver Mohamed Kediye by helping his organization retrieve camera footage of the shooting, which took place in downtown Seattle.
Kediye, a father of six, was “someone people really loved and respected, and he really leaves a void in the community,” Mumin said.
Mumin also said Harrell has failed to create the rider safety task force they proposed two years ago to come up with solutions to help keep drivers safe, such as cameras in cars and a quick way to contact law enforcement if they find themselves in danger. He believes that Wilson, unlike Harrell, will listen to rideshare drivers who’ve asked to be included in conversations about transportation safety.
During a campaign forum in South Seattle last month, Mumin asked Harrell what he was doing to solve Kediye’s murder. Harrell responded by accusing Wilson of wanting to defund the police and suggesting that if he’s reelected, there will be enough police and detectives to solve the crime. “It has not been solved, and that’s exactly why I support having police officers, Harrell said.”That’s exactly why I’m not defunding the police department, because we need the resources to give that family justice.”
Mumin wasn’t convinced. “It seemed like the mayor was actually diverting the question to the police department, when to the best of our knowledge, the mayor is the head of the police department,” HE said. “He’s the one who names the chief of police, and he could have taken much more of a leadership role in making sure that this crime is solved.”
After the campaign forum, Mumin said, someone from Harrell’s campaign reached out to ask him, “Why did I ask that question in public?’ And my response was very clear—this crime has taken so long to solve. We will continue to ask every time we get an opportunity to ask the mayor this question.”
By Erica C. Barnett