Seattle’s first homicide of 2026 started more than half a century ago, in a schoolyard dispute outside Garfield High. Joseph Garrett, who was paralyzed as a teenager after that shooting, died on Jan. 4 at age 71, and county officials now say the decades-old gunshot wound is to blame. The fatal shot was fired near Garfield in the early 1970s, and the suspected shooter was never charged.
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office conducted an autopsy and, in a Jan. 6 decedents list, classified Garrett’s manner of death as homicide caused by a historical gunshot wound, according to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. The listing for case 26-00036 cites septic complications and a gunshot wound among the contributing factors. That official ruling is what places Garrett’s death on the ledger as one of Seattle’s first homicides of 2026.
How a 1970s shooting became a 2026 homicide
Contemporary coverage and more recent reporting sketch out what happened outside Garfield. A fight near the school in the early 1970s left a 19-year-old Garrett shot and eventually paralyzed, and he then lived for decades with the consequences of that injury, according to KUOW. The station points to a short Seattle Post-Intelligencer item from October 1973 that described a scuffle at 25th Avenue and Jefferson Street, in front of what is now Garfield High School.
The school’s campus is located nearby at 400 23rd Ave, according to Seattle Public Schools. Beyond those sparse details, publicly available archival information about Garrett’s life between the shooting and his death remains limited…