On a recent afternoon, a bus stop several blocks from Rainier Beach High School was open for operation. The two trees standing next to it were wrapped in white flowers and notes from loved ones in honor of two Rainier Beach students who were fatally shot there in late January.
Close to three months later, community members are petitioning King County Metro and the City of Seattle to close the stop and build a permanent memorial for Tyjon Stewart and Tra'Veiah Houfmuse in its place.
"We want this to happen," petition organizer Angie Rada said. "Not just for the boys, but for the community and for the kids, so they can feel like something is being done and that this is not another crime … that's just being swept under the rug."
As of April 10, the petition has garnered more than 820 verified signatures. Mayor Katie Wilson's office and King County Metro did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Jan. 30, shortly after school let out, Stewart, 18, and Houfmuse, 17, were shot and killed at the bus stop at Rainier Avenue South and South Henderson Street. Rada and her grandson, a cousin of Houfmuse, were driving when they heard the news from the grandson's classmate and sped to the scene.
Soon after, community members gathered for a vigil and created a memorial at the site of the bus stop. In a virtual meeting on Feb. 24, a Metro representative said the department was working to preserve the memorial.
Seattle police arrested a juvenile suspect last month for the fatal shooting. The suspect, 16, was not a student of Rainier Beach High School, but may have had a relationship with Stewart and Houfmuse.
"These were babies, they were kids," Rada said. "This should not be happening right after they're trying to leave from school and get on the bus from school. I just have a hard time with that, because it wasn't like that when I was growing up."
Houfmuse's grandfather Tony Colbray said in an interview that his grandson was just like him: "goofy," talked smack, but was a lover. Colbray hopes the city invests in a memorial because it's a "genuine way" to show love to a community that needs it.
"I don't look at it as doing it for my grandson. He's gone," Colbray said. "It would be doing something in his name for the community. [And] not just the community; it can transcend out into the world."
The bus stop has reopened in recent weeks, after a previous King County Metro memo stated the stop would remain closed until the end of February.
The proposed memorial centers the tree next to the bus stop, with a wrap-around bench and plaques engraved with the handwritten messages inscribed on pieces of paper that currently hang from its branches. Rada envisions the memorial as a place for students and community members to reflect.
A former student of Rainier Beach High School, who asked not to be named in order to keep focus on the victims, remembers Stewart as a lover of basketball and sports, and Houfmuse as someone who always made people laugh. The two were always together and well-known in the community.
The former student signed the petition, in hopes that a permanent memorial will serve as a reminder that gun violence can happen to anybody.
"If you're seeing something on a day-to-day basis, maybe parents will ask their kids more questions," they said. "Maybe we could get reasons on why kids are running around with guns. It's just to show the realness of what happens."
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