Dozens of gunshots pierce the quiet, jarring me awake at 3:30 a.m. It’s a warm night in early July, must just be fireworks, I say to myself before falling back to sleep. Later, I learn about the 30-plus cartridge casings that police found at the intersection three blocks from my home in north Seattle. A neighbor’s security camera captured what I had missed while sleeping: the explosion of gunfire, muzzle flashes, wisps of debris blasted off a wall, a group of hooded shooters emerging from a dark alley firing handguns without pause: tat, tat. Tat, tat, tat.
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Seconds earlier, a man had approached a woman dressed in a top, panties, and stilettos. Another man confronted him, pulled a gun, and the firefight ensued, with the targeted man leaping almost comically as if to avoid being hit. Police said at least one woman was shot and injured during the melee, one of several shootings last summer at the corner of Aurora and 101st.
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Police attribute much of the violence to sex traffickers jockeying for turf. Girls, some not even teenagers, have been forced into the commercial sex trade here. The roadway has for decades been associated with the city’s seedier elements, like drugs and prostitution, but sex trafficking has flourished and become far more conspicuous in recent years. The city accused two of the motels along the strip of facilitating prostitution and forced them to close over the summer of 2023. Not long after, the activity moved south along Aurora Avenue North. It landed in the surrounding neighborhoods, including mine. All out in the open. The streets and the parked cars — the neighborhood itself — became the new motel.
If you are in the U.S. and suspect someone is being trafficked, please call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888. In Canada, call the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-833-900-1010.
To learn more about how to protect children and teens from traffickers and identify signs of grooming, visit 3Strands Global Foundation at 3sgf.org. To find out more about the Rotary Club of the Pacific Northwest Ending Sex Trafficking, visit rotarypnw.org.
“It was insane how quickly it erupted,” says Andrew Steelsmith, another neighbor whose security camera footage of the disturbances that year seemed to touch a nerve in the city. The former Coast Guard law enforcement officer and his family have lived here since 2016. At least one bullet has hit the fence behind his house. The videos he’s posted over the years track the accelerating chaos. What started as one or two cars passing each night when he moved in turned into more than 100. “There were five, six, or seven women standing in the road, and a line of traffic waiting like a drive-through,” he says.
A security camera captured a gunfight likely sparked by the sex trafficking trade on Aurora Avenue North.
Courtesy of I. Jordan
Frustrated by the spike in violence and his now weekly walks with neighbors to pick up fast-food wrappers, used condoms, and other trash, Steelsmith began piecing together his dashcam and security video, including a time-lapse sequence showing the astonishing number of cars rolling through. He posted it online, and it quickly sounded a wake-up call, grabbing the attention of the community and local officials. “I released that video, which really showed what everyone was missing when they were sleeping,” he says.
It showed me, too, what I was missing when my eyes were closed.
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The neighborhood next door
Just a few miles north of Seattle’s glittering downtown, home to some of the world’s richest tech companies, this turbulent section of Aurora Avenue North burrows through block after block of drab urban terrain, auto body shops, nondescript shopping centers, restaurants. The roadway is completely different from the days when it was part of U.S. Highway 99, or the Pacific Highway, a celebrated road-trip route that ran from Mexico to Canada in the early 20th century.
Walk a couple of blocks west, though, toward Puget Sound, and you enter another world, a neighborhood of 1920s bungalows, newly built townhomes, and large single-family houses, some near collapse and others selling for over $1 million. On a typical Saturday afternoon, children run and bounce around well-kept playgrounds, dogs excitedly play fetch in adjacent parks, and soil-smudged neighbors tend to their plots in community gardens billowing with flowers and leafy vegetables. Couples push strollers as they walk home from coffee shops, breweries, and grocery stores.
My husband and I moved to the area three years ago. After more than a decade working in journalism in Chicago, I was looking for a career change and found a role in corporate communications with Amazon in Seattle. We canvassed the city for months looking for a home in the city’s pricey housing market and landed in a neighborhood bordering Aurora Avenue North.
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Like many neighbors, I didn’t know how deeply some of the area’s problems ran or how they’d shifted in recent years. Then luxury cars with tinted windows began slowly circling day and night, dropping off young women in tight, short dresses or other scant clothing. Gunfire became a nightly occurrence. We no longer felt safe walking in the evenings.
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One chilly fall morning, as I walked to a bus stop along Aurora on my way to work, I rounded a corner and came face to face with a girl who looked no older than 15. She was balancing on red stilettos and wearing a red lace negligee. It was 7 a.m. on a Thursday. I boarded the bus stunned and watched her slowly cross the street. I looked for resources online but felt helpless as I read warnings about how violent sex traffickers were often watching the women from nearby vehicles.
Virginia McKenzie is a founder and charter president of the Rotary Club of the Pacific Northwest Ending Sex Trafficking.