Matthew Lanske begged for help at a locked convenience store door after being shot three times, only to be filmed by employees as he bled.
The 21-year-old had stumbled into an illegal street takeover in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood in the early hours of Sept. 6, according to his mother, Shanda Barney, who spoke to Fox 13. A man and woman had pulled a gun to rob one of Lanske’s friends, Isaac Elijah Rios, 20. Lanske jumped in to intervene when shots were fired, and Rios was fatally struck.
Lanske took two bullets to the stomach and one to the pelvis, which shattered the bone and struck a major artery. Despite those wounds, he pursued the gunman until he reached a nearby convenience store seeking aid.
Barney told Fox 13 that store workers responded by locking the doors and recording him on their phones as he pleaded for entry. “He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, ‘Mom, they wouldn’t let me in. They locked the doors. I begged them to let me, and there was so much blood coming out of my stomach, I thought I was going to die.'”
“What breaks my heart almost as much as the shooting itself is knowing that while my son was fighting for his life, people were standing around filming him, taking pictures instead of helping him,” she added.
Rios’ aunt, Beneta Lal, recounted similar bystander cruelty in a GoFundMe page created to raise funeral expenses for the former high school football player. “In those terrifying moments, Isaac and his friend were shot and left to die, all while being filmed,” she wrote on the webpage. “Isaac was found on the sidewalk, bleeding and fighting for his life … despite every effort to save him, he did not survive.”
Rios was one of three people killed in the Belltown neighborhood in a 24-hour period, according to Fox 13.
Lanske was rushed to the hospital and underwent multiple surgeries. He awoke to learn that Rios had not survived the attack.
Brooklynne Lanske, Matthew’s sister, spoke to KOMO news about her brother’s psychological state upon waking. “He has, I feel like, survivor’s guilt, you know,” she said. “He wanted to save his friend so bad, and he woke up to so many changes.”
Both families are now demanding justice and urging witnesses to contact police. Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound has offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
The shooting unfolded during an illegal street takeover, a growing phenomenon in which drivers block intersections to perform stunts and race, often drawing large crowds that complicate emergency response and law enforcement intervention. Lanske and Rios had simply been in the area when the armed robbery began, with no indication they were participants in the takeover itself.