Seattle’s second homicide victim of 2024 was member of activist Latino family

SEATTLE — A grieving woman spoke out 13 days after her fiancé was found near death in the Chinatown-International District. She wants to figure out who took his life.

Thirty-two-year-old Joel Silva of Mountlake Terrace was the second person murdered in Seattle so far this year.

KIRO 7 was told this victim died not long after he was brought to Harborview, something that continues to haunt his longtime fiancée.

“Like I told everybody, I left my heart and soul in a bed in Harborview,” said LeAnne Bible. “When I walked out of that hospital, I left a good part of me behind.”

Nearly two weeks after Joel Esteban Silva was shot and killed, the pain is still raw for LeAnne Bible, Leanne Silva, as she often calls herself.

“He always called me his wife, never fiancée,” she said. “Anytime he introduced me, ‘This is my wife.’ He never said fiancée. We met when we were 16.”

According to eyewitnesses, Silva was walking past Seattle’s Navigation Center on 12th Avenue South on January 31, sometime around 8 o’clock.

“People that saw him said he was going home,” she said. “So, headed home would mean (his) dad’s or our house (in Mountlake Terrace).”

But he never made it.

“I was down at my job site,” said an eyewitness. “And I heard the shots ring out and stuff like that. And the first thing I did was, I ran behind a dumpster because I wasn’t trying to get hit.”

This man said he never saw Silva. But that was the second shooting there in about a week. Bible said she was told her fiancee was found lying on the sidewalk, his life slipping away.

“I have questions about how long it took them to get to him?” Bible asked. “How was he treated on that ground? Why did he bleed to death when he was four minutes from a hospital, the best trauma center?”

She said Silva’s father, Salvador, fought alongside legendary Latino activist Roberto Maestas for what eventually became El Centro de la Rasa.

Now she is fighting for answers, as she grieves.

“The last thing I did was put my cheek to his and I felt that little bit of heat,” she said. “And I felt that cold go like this. And I watched the last little bit of color go up.”

Seattle Fire confirmed that when violence is involved, Seattle police officers have to secure the scene before medics can move in to provide aid.

They say they have to look at their records to determine if that was the case this time.

Leanne Bible is asking anyone with information to tell Seattle police. She wants this killer found.

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