Focus: Adults in the Room - We Keep Us Safe: Inside the White Jeep

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

An interview with a protester who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting leads to a tip that changes the entire investigation. We Keep Us Safe is part of Focus, a dedicated documentary channel from KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR network. Get in touch with the team by email at [e-mail]. Support KUOW and projects like this by donating at kuow.org/donate/focus.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Chris Morgan, host of the wild. Over the last 35 years, I've worked in the wildest places on Earth, tracking tigers in Siberia, filming orangutans in Borneo, following humpback whales, migrating jaguars, iridescent hummingbirds, and learning from the people devoted to protecting them. These stories changed how I see the world. I think they'll do the same for you.

The Wild with Chris Morgan, available wherever you get your podcasts. Focus. in Seattle. Heads up, this episode contains explicit language and the sound of gun violence. Previously on, we keep us safe. Do not walk around in the dark. It is unsafe. It is a powder deck. Fear and paranoia take over chop.

Can you tell me specifically? I'm not very familiar with firearms. AR-15. That's an AR-15. AR-15. More shots fired. More shots fired. More shots fired. More shots fired. The night Antonio was killed. Protesters thought that Chop was under attack. Card has been circling around, shooting more shots into tents.

People inside Chop shot back. Our security team was not aiming to kill. As we combed through all of the videos we had to figure out what happened the night of the shooting, this one person kept popping up. Right there on the bike. Oh yeah, you see his long hair. One of the first things you notice about Colby Williams is his hair. It is a flowing mane of someone who looks like he could be in a hair metal band.

And his apartment is clearly the home of a metalhead and specifically a Metallica fan. Totally, you guys can have a seat here on the couch? Yeah, sure. So I'm going to look at your guitars first, though. Oh, wow. Colby's got guitars. He's got amps. And he can shred.

But along with all this heavy metal stuff are relics from another part of Colby's life. Oh, there's like a memory box? The months he spent at the center of Seattle's protests in 2020. This was... I know what that is. Yeah, this was shot at me. That's a rubber bullet.

Can I see that? Yeah. Oh, I remember finding those all over the ground. Where'd this hit you? In my chest. Yeah. Colby is from the indigenous Simshian people from a place called Metlicatla in Alaska.

And he came to CHOP to show native solidarity with black protesters. Saga Lipliplipem Segex, Duayu, Gishputwada Diabtegu, my simshian name Saga Liplippem Segex translates to peaceful thunder. We're here to talk with Colby because he was there minutes after Antonio Mays Jr. was shot. He kept showing up on live streams.

That night, it was just extremely chaotic. Colby says police have never talked him about that night, but we want to know what he saw. So we pull up these videos on Colby's big screen TV to refresh his memory. Damn. What? You're nauseous? I'm going to be over. Who took this?

Omari. This video, by the journalist Omari Salisbury, shows the aftermath of the shooting. Protesters have already driven off with any. Antonio and Robert to get them help, and a bunch of people still mill around in the dark. Omari walks up to the crashed white Jeep, and he struggles to take in what he sees. Damn. Then a voice responds from off-camera. What?

You're nauseous? I'm in the phone. What? You're nauseous? I'm the one who killed him? When we first heard this, it was like, did somebody really say that? Is someone confessing... What? You're nauseous? I'm moving the phone.

But maybe that's not what was said. It could have been a volunteer medic saying, I'm the one who pulled them, meaning pulled the boys out of the car. Right, we can't tell. When we asked Omari about this, he said he didn't remember seeing this person, but we thought Colby might have.

That's my bike. Yeah. I'm standing right here. That's me. This video seems to trigger something in Colby. He gets very quiet and his energy changes. And it almost becomes tense. He keeps stopping the video to rewind this moment. Over and over.

What? Your nauseous? I'm here in a focus. What? Colby also isn't able to identify the person speaking on the tape. But it turns out that's not even what he's interested in. What? You're nauseous? Jesus fucking Christ. Colby hits pause, and he points at a corner of the screen.

I'm fairly certain that these shadows, this is the third person. It's hard to trust. my memory just because, like, this is big information for me to process right now. But I personally have always thought that there must have been a third person. He thinks there was a third person inside the White Jeep, someone there with Antonio and Robert West. I've always felt like that was the most plausible explanation was that there was a third person with them that was the one who had the guns or took the guns and got away. Protesters we've talked to really believe that the boys in the white jeep were firing guns

that night. This is a story that they've maintained since the shooting. But in all of our reporting, we've never seen anything that backs up this story. None of the videos we've watched show gunshots coming from the white sheep, and we've never heard of any guns being found inside it. Colby's theory that there was a third person in the car who ran away with the guns, it just seemed kind of out there to us. So we pretty much dismissed it and moved on. But a couple of months later, our team was rewatching old videos from Chop,

and in an offhand moment in one of them, we found a clue. It was the name of someone who may have witnessed the events of that night closer than almost anyone else. I managed to reach this person and, oh my God, Colby was actually onto something. Okay, it's recording. Tell me what you just told me. I found him on Facebook. He's really afraid of sharing his full name. I got the okay to use his initials.

He says police have never spoken to him about, what happened at CHOP. He doesn't want to get involved with law enforcement, and he doesn't want to get dragged into a court case. And so we're not using this person's full name. We're using his real initials, which are DG. And I basically ask him if he knows or knew Antonio and if he was at CHOP. And he quickly tells me that not only did he know Antonio and not only was he at CHOP, He said that he was in the car with Robert and with Antonio. He was there. He is the third person in the car that Colby told us about.

I ask him if he's available that afternoon. He says yes. I'm going right now to record it to meet him in person. Oh. Can I go? I don't know. He doesn't know about you. I think it would be weird if there was another dude in the car.

What do you think? Can I go? Fine, let's go. Okay. From NPR's Embedded with KUOW in the Seattle Times, this is We Keep Us Safe. I'm Sydney Brownstone. And I'm Will James. This is episode six.

Why is health care so expensive in the U.S.? How is my credit score calculated? Does immigration enforcement actually reduce crime? We all have the big, complicated questions we're curious about. And that's why we made Control F. Control F is a podcast from KUOW that explains how the world works using data. Each episode, we break down the numbers driving culture, the economy, and politics. Join the search. Listen to Control F wherever you get podcasts.

I'm just kind of stunned. I don't think I really believe that there was a third person in the car. Yeah, I didn't believe it. We're on our way to a town outside Seattle. and we start talking about what we want to get out of this interview with DG. This might be a one-time chance to talk to somebody who was there in the car that night. There is no better witness account imaginable than this one. Yeah, I mean, I also wonder how forthcoming he's going to be. Like, he's also the person who could answer, was someone shooting from the car?

Was he shooting from the car? Does he know who killed Antonio? Of course we're hitting traffic. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's I-5. We finally pull into this labyrinthine housing complex, and I see someone walking down the hill towards us. It's a young man in his late teens or early 20s. We introduced ourselves to him,

and he seems a little, like, he's. He's just been swept up in a whirlwind. Okay, so we're sitting here with DG. And DG, you say that you were in the car with Antonio and Robert? Yeah, I was in the car from start to finish. From DG, we don't only get a new account of what happened the night Antonio was killed. We also get a vivid picture of what Chop was like for these kids who ended up there. You just start out by telling us, like, how you came to chop?

Like, what drew you there? Like, who wasn't that chop, you know? Like, genuinely, I was 16 years old. Like, everybody was there. It was something to do. I was a young kid, you know? When DG gets to chop, it was the middle of the pandemic. And for teenagers,

chop was, like, the place to be. And are people there, like, to participate in the protest? Are they there to party? From my perspective, there was way more people there, like, just to be. be there, like one just gigantic-ass party. Some of his other friends from high school were there. DG knew Robert West very well.

He knew his family. They were friends. I was at his house when we decided to go there. I was at his house. I was like, yo, I'm seeing all this stuff on social media. Like, we should go there. And he was like, okay. And we did.

DG gets to CHOP around the same time as Antonio did from California, about two weeks after CHOP started. How did you meet Antonio? I mean, Antonio, I had to chop. too, Robert. They encountered each other just like how I'm saying. I encountered all these people. Together they kind of become the three musketeers. Antonio and Robert and DG are basically living at Chop. They're staying in a tent on the playfield. And that tent was like me, Robert, and Pocket Stint.

This was a nickname that Antonio had. He went by Lil Pocket or Pocket. We just become like real close. Like real close up all night, you know, I just real close. It kind of sounds like summer camp where suddenly people you met a few days ago are now the closest friends in your life. What did you learn about Pocket's story about, like, where he came from, why he was there, what he was into? He said that he came from California. He took some money from his parents and, like, he said he left a note. He was about that George Floyd stuff. That's why he had came there. That kind of distinguished him from a lot of the other teenagers there. I just viewed it as one big party.

But then DG experienced the party turning. Just bad people. What do you mean by that? Like, what kind of people? People wanting to cause trouble. They are teenagers, surrounded by adults. DG tells this story about this one adult, who they were particularly afraid of. There was this dude, he was like seven feet tall, you know, like genuinely,

seven feet tall, the biggest dude I've ever seen in my life. And people were saying, like, he raped this girl, supposedly. Everybody feared him, genuinely. Everybody was scared of him, you know. I got this, like, the biggest wine bottle ever seen, bro. And I just watched him beat up my friend, and I took the wine bottle, and I went like this and threw it. And it hit him in his head, and he just dropped.

Genuinely, he dropped. The biggest dude I ever seen just dropped. The whole park starts coming up, like, praising us and all this. And then since then, we were the park security. Those boys in this kind of atmosphere, of chaos, of violence, and no police, begin to feel like, well, maybe they're the police. So every time something happened in the park,

people were coming from all over, oh, this happened, we need you guys here this night. You know, we're just little-ass kids, so it's fun. We're like, okay, we'll go over there. Who in this zone is not security at this point? You've got the sentinels. You've got all these other overlapping groups and individuals declaring themselves security.

And now you've got three teenagers describing this Lord of the Flies environment, and people are telling them their security too. And that is really how everything started off the trio of us. That's how we got so close. It's like, okay, there's no police or nothing, you know. So people are doing whatever they want, essentially. So we were like the only form of, like, justice in a way, you know, because there's no justice there at all.

DG remembers that something just felt off the night Antonio was killed. Bad day, I don't really know what we did. It's all just blurry. Protesters remember hearing mysterious pops going off and wondering whether they were fireworks or maybe gunshots. Just an insane amount of stuff. One protester remembers three kids running around with knives that evening. Wow.

Do you remember this? Oh, wow. I think I do know what you're talking about. Those three kids are like us. Like, genuinely, like, you know, there was no group of no other three kids. I'm surprised Diji is willing to be so frank about something like this. It seems like he's being honest. I can promise you that there was no other group of the three kids.

And we did have knives. That's why I said park security. Those knives were needed. Like, well, it wasn't safe out there for little kids at all. DG says he was with Antonio and Robert that whole night, except for about 10 minutes when he got into a fight with someone and accidentally maced himself. I, like, tried to mace him, but I maced myself. They were putting, like, milk or whatever in my eyes.

Like, I was, like, going through it. In that moment, DG says he's frustrated and his eyes are stinging. And so I'm not feeling it. He just wants to go back to his tent, and he splits up with the other two boys, Robert West and Antonio. So, yeah, we split up. He says he didn't know what they were up to until, Like 10 minutes later, the whole entire park I just hear gravitating towards one area. Towards the playfield, one of the central gathering points at CHOP.

And the playfield itself is mostly empty, but there are tents around the edges of it. So I'm gravitating to it, too. Like, what's going on? And then boom, like this white jeep's doing donuts on the turf and all this. He sees this white Jeep driving around. We know at one point it comes within 10 feet of a 10. It freaks the protesters out. DG does not sound like he was scared of this. He certainly doesn't see any gunshots being fired from the Jeep.

I think he sees it as something people are doing for fun. Yeah. It makes him wonder like, I'm like, who is that? Turns out, inside the Jeep are his friends, Antonio and Robert. I don't know what else. I get in, brother. I'm like, what? This is you guys in the Jeep doing all that.

According to DG, while he and his friends had been separated for those 10 minutes, Robert and Antonio had somehow gotten his Jeep. DG says he didn't know it was stolen, and he has no idea if his friends were involved in stealing it. Who was driving? From my memory, Robert was driving. I remember it very well, too. The pocket was riding in front of me and Robert was driving.

DG says once he's in the Jeep with his friends, there's a moment when the mood suddenly flips. Yeah, you know, I'm laughing and shit. As soon as we get off of the turf, though, we start getting shot at instantly. That's after the break. Why is health care so expensive in the U.S.? How is my credit score calculated?

Does immigration enforcement actually reduce crime? We all have big, complicated questions we're curious about, And that's why we made Control F. Control F is a podcast from KUOW that explains how the world works using data. Each episode, we break down the numbers driving culture, the economy, and politics. Join the search. Listen to Control F wherever you get podcasts. DG tells us that bullets start flying at the boys pretty much the instant they drive off the playfield.

So you go off the field. Like, do you remember where the car goes? It was one big-ass loop-de-loop. Like, we were driving, like, 120 miles per hour on downtown Seattle. Like, there's no place to be in front in life. And I'm looking around for them, genuinely, because we're just getting shot at by assault rifle bullets. And I don't know why.

Is someone chasing you? Oh, yeah, for sure. Like, in a car chasing you? Yes, like, multiple cars. Security videos we obtained from that night capture two cars chasing the boys. One is the silver Nissan Pathfinder whose passengers fired the first shots at them. The other is this white SUV covered in graffiti.

That one drops out of the chase after a few seconds. DG couldn't have seen these videos because they were released after we talked with him. But his description matches the video we have from the start of the chase. Then for about three minutes, the cars disappear from any videos. So we can't corroborate all of DG's. account. DG says he can hear the people chasing them talking to each other. They're training like it's a call of duty mission. I don't understand it.

Giving out callouts and all this. You hear them through the windows giving these callouts? Yeah, literally, through the windows. And you got to imagine when I get out the car, I'm hearing you even more callouts. Oh, we got them, got them, right here, did it all this shit. Like, you know, oh, we're coming up right now. Yeah, I'm hearing all these callouts. Were they on walkie-talkies? Yes, exactly. Like, that type of thing. What I heard is that they were ex-military. So these People are, like, really advanced.

Like, they're treating this, like, a spec ops mission or something. It's an execution. There's no better word for it than the execution. Never shooting us to kill. Did you ever see who was shooting at you? Like, to put a face to it, no, I couldn't, because, like, I said, I'm laying on the ground. He says he was lying flat in the back of the Jeep. I'm laying there thinking I'm going to die.

Like, you know, these bullets are, like, whizzing over my head and going through these seats. You know, they're not hitting me. but they're hitting. While they're racing through the streets, the boys are apparently on the phone with Sierra Walker, the woman who described herself as Antonio's street sister. And Sierra says she tells them, Come back to chop, you're safe, go by the pussy.

You will be safe there. Nothing will happen. Sierra recounts this in an interview with The Daily Mail, and the boys seem to listen to her. Instead of driving as far away as possible, they loop right back around to chop. But Sierra was wrong. The boys round the corner by the vacant police precinct.

There are cement barricades, and these mark the border of chop. In the middle of these barricades is a section that protesters have described as the entrance to chop. It was usually guarded by security. The jeep heads straight for it and crashes. I remember smack it to the barricade. and I remember, you know, tell them, come on, we got to go. It's literally that fright or flight scenario.

Like, genuine, I was scared for my life. I don't know why I'm getting shot. I don't know who's shooting at me, none of this. Now gunfire is coming at them from the front, from the barricades. And DG remembers Antonio saying something. The only words I really remember is, like, a pocket being like, oh, I got hit. Sierra hears this same thing over the phone. And one of them screamed out,

I'm here and I don't want to die And next thing I know the phone hung up I'm like, open the door being like, we have to go. Like we have to go Because if I would have stayed there, whatever, they would have shot me and killed me on site. And I'd have to talk the car. You know, start running.

As DG is dashing out of the car, he hears shooting and someone yelling, Get on the ground, get on the ground. Like they were yelling that to me. Someone saw you get out of the car and was saying, get on the house. The shooters seem to be running from that area. DG tells us that he gets away,

and he assumes that Antonio and Robert were running behind him. Minutes go by, he's hanging around chop or nearby. It seems like the reality of the situation hasn't caught up to DG. I think the police got them. And, you know, like 30 minutes later, just chilling there, smoke, or whatever. They're like, nah, everyone all. the reports are saying D-O-A. DOA.

He thinks both the boys are dead. And I just like break down. I just break down instantly. And then like you didn't feel real after that. As DG is telling us this, he can't even look us in the eye. He turns his head and tells this part of the story facing another direction. Like it's too difficult to face even now, years later.

I was just crying in random people's arms. Like, I didn't even know them. A lot was just, like, crying. Like, even talking about it's, like, sad right now. But, like, yeah, bro, it was just, it was just fucked up. DG doesn't realize this at the time. But later, he says he finds out that a bullet did actually graze him on his calf. There's so much adrenaline going through me.

Like, I don't feel that. I don't feel that. He calls his mom. Crying, like, breaking now. I'm just like, I need you to come pick me up. Like, that was, like, the only word I could form, you know, and just hurt being a mom. She's like, I'm there. Like, no questions, you know?

His mom and his brother show up to pick him up. My brother pulled up, he was, like, ready to do whatever because he didn't know why I was crying. Like, he didn't know something that happened to me or what, you know? Like, he just sees me like just, like, crying or something. Like, I go into the arms, you know. Bringing up a lot of stuff for you right now. Yeah, like, when I really do think back on it, like, that's something to be the saddest because, like, I relive it. You know, and I try not to do that.

I just like push it away. It's like, yeah. It's so devastating for me, honestly. Do you still think about this today? You said you deal with PTSD. Like, how does that show up for you? Yeah, like now it's like less, you know. I try not to think about it, but like, yeah,

I was really traumatized for like a year, not getting in no cars, you know? Really just like being inside the house. Yeah. And like, yeah, it was just like really crazy for me. I mean, it's happy to be alive. Listening to the story from DG's perspective, there's something that really struck us. And it's something that knocks down the story protesters have been telling

ever since the shooting happened, that the boys in the white Jeep were firing at them. More shots fired, more shots fired. More shots fired. More shots fired. Shooting into tents. Card has been circling around. Shooting more shots into tents. DG says that never happened. We didn't have no guns.

You know, they tried to make the story like, oh, they had guns, whatever. No, there was no gun in life because genuinely, if we would have had guns, like, in that scenario, we would have been shooting back at them because, like, what? Who's just going to drive and just let someone just shoot? That's like target practice, you know? Like, no, 3, 16-year-old boys would have been shooting back at them if we had guns. We're just sitting ducks getting literally just, like, hawked down. Newly released evidence from Antonio Sr.'s wrongful death lawsuit supports DG's account.

As part of its defense, the city of Seattle hired an analyst to look through footage from that night. The analyst synced up eight videos, recreated the paths of the vehicles, and tracked gunfire that was picked up by cameras. His report notes shots from multiple sources. It says nothing about any shots coming from the white Jeep. And those rumors about the boys being involved in a gang initiation? No, they weren't doing that. There was nobody to initiate then. Like, you know what I mean?

Like, what? No. I can absolutely say that's false. Never happened at all. Protesters over the years have pointed to a few reasons why the shooting that killed Antonio was justified. They say the boys in the white Jeep were attacking chop, firing guns, and either in a gang or doing a gang initiation.

At this point in our... investigation, we can pretty confidently say none of these things are true. We found no convincing evidence for them and a good amount of evidence saying otherwise. What defenders of the shooting are left with is the boys were inside a stolen jeep. They may have attacked and robbed someone earlier in the night to get it, and they were driving it recklessly. And this raises a question for us. for a movement against police violence, is this the standard for lethal force? Three teenagers on an apparent joyride in a stolen car.

DG feels that what happened to him and his friends should have been a bigger deal, but there's just been silence. Everybody just tried to swoop down the road, like the city, everybody. There's so many people, even to this day, like, what should ever happen with that? Like, nothing.

Nothing ever happened with that. There's so much proof and evidence out there. It's like how to just get swept under the rug. What makes you feel that way that, like, it's being pushed under the rug? You know, two white kids get gunned down like that, they're going to be, like, trying to find out who did it instantly. No, they just sweep it under the rug. Oh, it's just another chop shooting, you know?

Just another white kid that, like, you know, regular just sweeping under the rug. That's just how I viewed it. Five years to this day, has there even been in the rest? No. It's like they don't care. We asked Seattle police about the status of their investigation and sent them a long list of questions. They declined to answer, saying the case is active and ongoing.

DG says he just wants someone to be held accountable. Weather court system goes probably won't happen, you know, and it is what it is. Everything that's done and dark comes out in light. They won't just be unknown forever. As it just takes time, like eventually the real story is going to come out. DG thinks it was chop security who shot at the boys when they hit the barriers and that there might have been more than one shooter.

With those masks and those guns, those were the only people there, you know? There wasn't just hell of people like that. Those were the people chasing us down. X military, that's what they were. But he didn't see anyone's face. So we looked for other ways to identify the people DG described.

A couple weeks later, we were searching through written records of 911 calls from the night of the shooting. And this one entry in that log stood out. It was from a caller who said he witnessed that shooting at the barricades from his window. The witness's name is Eric Deentino. The police talked to Eric once shortly after the shooting. I found him on Instagram and he said he'd tell me what he saw.

It was hard to sleep because it was warm and no air conditioning. So he kept the windows open. He's kind of lying awake at night. And I remember just hearing this car, like, revving down the street, like, coming really fast. And I was like, what the hell? It's crazy. And so I got up and looked out the window. And as I looked out the window, I see a white, I believe it was a cheap grand Cherokee,

just cruising through, like, passing our building, and then hitting the barrier at shop and kind of crashing into it. And I was like, holy shit, part of knowledge. And that's when I see someone approach the passenger side of the Jeep Guard Cherokee like really close, like point blank and just unload his clip. And then the guy that shot, the passenger just took off and that was the end of it. It was nuts.

It was probably the craziest thing I've ever seen. Do you remember who the guy was who shot point blank into the car? He looked like, I would say, a middle linebacker, tall, big dude. It was too far from where I was at to see his face, and it was dark. Eric originally told me that he thought the shooter was black. But when I talked with him later, he said he could have been white and was wearing something on his head. And he had what, like a long gun or like a handgun?

Handgun for sure. He looked like he knew what he was doing. Strong frame, you know, both hands on the gun. Did he like walk up or run up? He ran up. I had a few seconds between the Jeep crashing into the barrier and then seeing the shooter run up and shoot. It might have been those few seconds that allowed DG to run

and maybe saved his life. Eric's account lines up with another 911 call from that night. There must have been at least 10 shots fired. I came over to the window to have. actually see what was going on. This caller also lived right near the scene and witnessed the shooting firsthand. I physically saw a white Cherokee, ram the barricades, and then somebody actually shooting inside the vehicle.

Shooting inside the vehicle. I spoke to this caller who asked to remain anonymous to protect their safety, and they said they watched someone in all black who they said they watched someone in all black who they identified its chop security, actually opened the front passenger door, and fire into it at close range. According to DG, the front passenger seat is where Antonio was sitting. Hearing this, other clues we found suddenly make more sense in retrospect. Like that voice caught on tape right after the shooting, saying, you're not dead, huh? Want to get pistol whipped?

It's looking more and more like Antonio's killer wasn't someone panicked and firing wildly into the night, but someone who walked right up to the door and shot at close range. And we thought we might have a way to find that person. Early on in this investigation, I found a blog post archived on the internet, and I showed it to Will. So on this page, it's very convoluted, but basically they say that, they have decided to post information about who they think killed Antonio Mays. Wow. The post suggests that chop security played a role in shooting Antonio

and then may have helped cover it up. And not just chop security broadly, but a specific faction. They're saying they're members of the Sentinels, and it describes them as a cult. The Sentinels, the group that handed out radios and had, helped guard chops barricades. This post laid out all these people or code names associated with them. An alleged member goes by the nickname Joker.

And it says, Joker appears to be a LARPER, which is like live action role-playing. Also James Madison, the Sentinel whose photoshopped image went viral. We spent months digging into this blog post, gathering names and contact information for this group. And after hearing from DG and the 911 call witnesses, we decided it was time to talk to the Sentinels. What idea of who did it? Did police ever interview you about this? No.

That's on the next episode of We Keep Us Safe. We've added a map to our website that shows the moves that the cars in this episode made leading up to the shooting. Visit npr.org slash chop to see that. We Keep Us Safe from NPR's Embedded is a collaboration with the Seattle Times and KUOW. The series is reported and written by me, Sydney Brownstone, David Gutman, and Will James. This episode was edited by Luis Traeus and Laura Grenier's with support from Katie Simon. This episode was produced by Abby Wendell. Additional reporting by our senior producer, Adelina Lansini's.

Research and fact-checking by Danya Solomon and media. Yoko Wolf. Robert Rodriguez mastered the episode. Music by Audio Socket, Connor Moore from Seymour Sound, Firefly, Romteen Arablewey, Tom Pyle and Running Dog Music, and Universal Music production. Are you the one that gets the plans out of the group chat and into an actual restaurant? Let me help you out. I'm Brandy Fulwood, host of Seattle Eats, and I got to say this podcast is for you. Every week I talk to chefs, critics, industry people about the best places to eat in Seattle. So you always know where to go next. Listen to Seattle Eats on the KUOW app or wherever you get your podcasts.