Seattle, July 26 (TIWN) In a series of unrelated shooting incidents in the US city of Seattle, three people were killed and five others injured, according to the police.

“It just saddens me when I think about it,” said Tyrone Henderson, the general manager of the Stage Seattle Nightclub, which is next to a parking lot in Pioneer Square where two of the three homicide victims were shot around 2:30 a.m. “It’s not just the people that got shot but also the people who saw it. There’s a lot of traumatized people.”  He said the rash of unrelated shootings “puts a lot of pressure on the police and they can’t be everywhere at once.”  Interim Seattle police Chief Adrian Diaz expressed a similar sentiment and noted the rise in gun violence comes at a time when the Seattle Police Department is seeing a steady decline in the number of rank-and-file police officers able to respond to crime. About 270 officers had left the department over the past 18 months as of June.  “This isn’t just a staffing crisis. We have a public safety crisis,” Diaz said in an emailed statement. “People armed with guns are preying on our communities and every shooting victim is one victim too many. Families are losing loved ones and their trauma is real.”  Diaz said in the statement that police alone can’t curb increasing gun violence and called upon community members to encourage their friends and family to put down their weapons and find other ways to resolve disputes without resorting to violence.