Woman taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries after shooting, police chase in northeast Spokane

A woman has life-threatening injuries after a shooting and police chase that ended with officers pinning a car Friday afternoon near Gonzaga University.

Spokane police Officer Daniel Strassenberg said a man called 911 shortly after 1 p.m. saying his property had been stolen. The man reported he met with individuals in the area of Market Street and Euclid Avenue to try to recover his property when an altercation broke out.

The people left in a car, and the man followed them. At some point, someone fired shots from the car with multiple people in it, Strassenberg said.

Police located the car and followed it, pinning it on Hamilton Street near Springfield Avenue, about one block north of Trent Avenue.

Four people – believed to be three males and one female – were taken from the car by police. The female passenger had a serious head wound, possibly from a gunshot, and was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, Strassenberg said.

He said police were interviewing several people about the incident, but it was unclear whether any were arrested.

Strassenberg said he doesn’t believe the man who had items stolen from him fired shots, but police are investigating.

Items may have been thrown from the vehicle that was pinned, but Strassenberg said he did not know what the objects were.

Hamilton Street from Trent to Sharp avenues was closed for several hours as police investigated. The closure caused a great deal of traffic on surrounding streets, including Cincinnati Street through Gonzaga’s campus.

The car that was pinned had multiple police vehicles – with their blue and red flashing lights activated – around it hours after the crash on Hamilton Street.

Yellow and red crime scene tape and orange and white Street Department barriers blocked the scene of the crash. A police drone flew overhead.

Zachary Morley, a Gonzaga student, said he was driving south on Hamilton when he saw what he described as an undercover officer in a minivan speed past him. He said officers were also at the Hamilton and Trent intersection, so he turned off Hamilton onto another street.

In Morley’s rearview mirror, he saw a vehicle sliding sideways down the street with a police car next to it as if the police car pinned the vehicle, he said.

Morley said he saw three people come out of the car in handcuffs, and he believed one other person was still in the vehicle.

He said the incident was “pretty intense.”

“The amount of cop cars that were here was crazy,” Morley said.