Murder of Timothy Brenton

On the night of October 31, 2009, Seattle Police Field Training Officer Timothy Brenton, 39, and trainee officer Britt Sweeney, 33, were seated in a parked patrol car at 29th Avenue South and East Yesler Way in Seattle's Central District, discussing a traffic stop they had just completed. A vehicle pulled up alongside the patrol car and someone inside opened fire with a rifle. Sweeney ducked and was grazed on the head and back; Brenton was mortally wounded. The suspect's vehicle reversed and fled. Sweeney called for help, exited the vehicle, and returned fire as the shooter escaped.

Brenton, a nine-year veteran of the Seattle Police Department, had previously served as a police officer in La Conner, Washington, and was a United States Army veteran of the Gulf War. He was a graduate of West Seattle High School and Spokane Community College and had two children. Sweeney, who had been with the department for one month at the time, survived her injuries.

Seattle's police chief described the attack as an assassination and an act of domestic terrorism. Investigators identified a suspicious vehicle captured on dashboard cameras near the scene. A public memorial service for Brenton was held on November 6, 2009, at KeyArena following a procession from the University of Washington campus. As the ceremony concluded, officers from the Seattle and Tukwila police departments and the King County Sheriff's Office confronted Christopher Monfort, then 41, the registered owner of a vehicle matching the suspicious vehicle, at a Tukwila apartment complex. Monfort brandished a handgun and attempted to flee into his apartment; when he raised the weapon again, officers opened fire, seriously wounding him. He was taken to Harborview Medical Center, and his family stated he was paralyzed from the waist down as a result.

Inside Monfort's apartment, police found multiple rifles, a shotgun, a pistol, homemade explosives, booby traps, and a barricade of tires. Investigators matched ballistics from a rifle found in the apartment to the bullets used in the attack on Brenton and Sweeney, and reported a DNA match connecting Monfort to flags left at both the shooting scene and the scene of an October 22, 2009 firebombing of Seattle police vehicles at a city maintenance facility, in which prosecutors alleged he intended to kill police officers. No definitive motive was established, though Monfort left behind fliers criticizing police brutality and had expressed opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Authorities characterized him as having waged a "one-man war" against police; he reportedly compared police to British Redcoats and himself to Minutemen, and believed his actions were constitutionally justified.

On June 5, 2015, a King County jury convicted Monfort of murder, two counts of attempted murder, and one count of arson. He was sentenced to life in prison. Monfort died in prison of an amitriptyline overdose on January 18, 2017, at age 48.