The largely peaceful and cooperative sense of community that had been building around Seattle's Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) zone was largely shattered over the weekend by a shooting incident early Saturday morning in which two young black men were shot, one of them fatally. The source of the violence was ascribed to an alcohol-fueled late-night dispute among a group of people who were not directly affiliated with the CHOP project.

However, there was another shooting that night: Two hours later, only a block away, an African-American man claimed that a group of white men who used racial epithets shot him five times. He told KIRO-7 TV that he believed the men were some of the "Proud Boys" who have been prowling the fringes of CHOP and assaulting people.