More than a month after a gang-related shootout killed three people and wounded four others at one of Seattle's biggest summer festivals, the only person charged is a 15-year-old boy who says he was defending himself.

The teen, whose name has not been released because he is charged as a juvenile, faces first-degree assault with a deadly weapon and second-degree unlawful possession of a firearm in King County Superior Court. Prosecutors have added a firearm sentencing enhancement to the assault charge and plan to ask a judge in November to move the case to adult court. A status hearing is set for October. The boy remains in custody after a judge last week rejected a defense request to release him to electronic monitoring at his father's home.

Yet no one else has been arrested. Police say they believe at least two other people opened fire first in the crowded Seattle Center Armory on July 26, and court records cited by Fox News show the teen's shots were not responsible for any of the three deaths. That gap, one juvenile in custody, zero adults charged, three people dead, frames a case that raises hard questions about who is being held accountable and who is not.

A ghost gun, a food festival, and three lives lost

The Bite of Seattle is one of the city's signature summer events, an annual food festival held at the Seattle Center Armory near the Space Needle. The festival draws roughly 350,000 attendees each year, Breitbart reported. On July 26, around 6 p.m. local time, gunfire erupted among the crowd.

Three people died: 19-year-old Niko-Semo and a 44-year-old man were killed at the scene. A 56-year-old woman died later at Harborview Medical Center. Four others were wounded, a 2-year-old boy, a 23-year-old man, and two women aged 39 and 40, all reported in stable condition, the New York Post reported.

Festival attendee Estan Wakonabo described the scene to the Post:

"It was just pure chaos. People were hiding, were pushing, people were falling on the ground, baby strollers were falling."

Police recovered at least four firearms at the scene. The weapon tied to the 15-year-old was a Polymer80 "ghost gun", a privately assembled firearm without a serial number, fitted with an extended magazine capable of holding more than 30 rounds. Weapons allegedly tied to Niko-Semo were also recovered. The teen was arrested on site. Seattle Police described the shooting as a gang-related shootout involving at least two parties firing at each other.

The carnage at the Bite of Seattle followed a pattern of mass shootings striking public gatherings across the country, including a festival shooting in Toledo that left twelve people wounded as police hunted multiple gunmen.

Defense filing: eyewitnesses say the teen fired second

On August 28, public defender Hong Tran filed a memorandum in juvenile court asserting that the boy acted in self-defense. The filing, obtained and reported by KOMO News, laid out a version of events in which the teen went to the festival to enjoy the food and was standing near Niko-Semo when two unidentified suspects began shooting.

Tran wrote that law enforcement's own investigation supports the teen's account:

"Law enforcement has interviewed several eyewitnesses to the shooting who confirmed that [the teen] reached for a firearm after the shooting started."

The memorandum added that witnesses saw the teen "pull a firearm from a pouch and shoot in the direction of the shots." In a statement to officers after his arrest, the boy said simply: "I was getting shot at."

Tran asked the court to release the teen to electronic monitoring at his father's home. The judge refused.

The prosecution's view is sharply different. Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Logan Bryant filed an opposition to the teen's release and framed the boy's conduct as reckless, regardless of who fired first:

"There is no greater threat to the community than a person indiscriminately firing into a crowd of adults and children who only wanted to attend and enjoy Bite of Seattle."

Both sides agree on one point the court records make clear: the teen's shots did not cause any of the three deaths. That fact sits at the center of a case in which prosecutors still want the boy tried as an adult.

Police reviewed 450 hours of video, and still have no additional arrests

Interim Seattle Police Chief Andre Sayles told FOX 13 Seattle that investigators have reviewed approximately 450 hours of video from the festival and identified two potential persons of interest. But Sayles was careful not to call them suspects.

"I can say that we are looking at two potential persons of interest in this incident, not saying that they are the shooters or anything of that nature, but people that we have identified that we need to have a conversation with."

Sayles said detectives are moving closer to interviews and could make arrests if the evidence supports them. The King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office confirmed that no cases from the Bite of Seattle shooting other than the juvenile case have been referred by police investigators.

So the investigation grinds forward, slowly. A 15-year-old sits in juvenile detention. The people the defense says started the shooting remain unidentified and uncharged. And the families of three dead festival-goers wait for answers about who killed their loved ones.

The shooting bears similarities to other incidents of gang-related violence at public events, where bystanders pay the price for conflicts they had no part in.

Seattle's leadership failures compounded the crisis

The shooting itself was only the beginning of the city's problems. No emergency alert was sent during or after the attack. No public information was released for five hours. Mayor Katie Wilson initially provided incorrect suspect information, the Washington Examiner reported. The city's response drew immediate scrutiny.

Within days, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes was asked to step down during a meeting with the mayor. He resigned, and Wilson accepted. Five sources confirmed the departure to FOX 13 Seattle. Barnes later defended his response and said he had followed department protocol, though the specific protocol he cited was not detailed.

Before his departure, Barnes had acknowledged that gangs, which he initially referred to as "small groups" before using the word "gangs", were connected to 52% of shootings in Seattle despite gang members making up just 0.01% of the city's population. That statistic alone frames the scale of the problem Seattle's leadership has failed to contain.

The city's struggles with street violence extend well beyond the Bite of Seattle. A separate incident involving armed individuals wearing bulletproof vests and firing a 40mm launcher into an RV at a Seattle park illustrated a broader pattern of escalating lawlessness, National Review noted. Residents have grown so frustrated that some have resorted to public billboards to pressure city leaders into action.

Mass shootings at public gatherings have become a grim pattern nationwide. In East St. Louis, five family members were killed in a targeted shooting that also resulted in two teenagers being taken into custody.

One teenager held, zero adults charged, and a city still waiting

The case against the 15-year-old now moves toward two critical dates. In October, he returns to juvenile court for a status hearing. In November, prosecutors plan to ask a judge to transfer the case to adult court, where the consequences would be far more severe.

The self-defense claim will be tested against the prosecution's argument that firing a ghost gun with an extended magazine into a packed festival crowd is reckless conduct no matter who shot first. Both sides will rely on the same pool of eyewitness testimony and the mountain of video footage police have collected.

But the larger question hangs over the entire case. Police believe at least two other people opened fire at the Bite of Seattle. Those people killed three festival-goers and wounded four others, including a toddler. More than a month later, investigators have identified two "potential persons of interest", and made zero arrests beyond the juvenile who, by the prosecution's own court records, did not fire the fatal shots.

Our earlier coverage of the Bite of Seattle shootout detailed the initial police response and the pursuit of a gang connection.

Andre Sayles, the interim chief brought in after Barnes' departure, has been measured in his public statements. He has not confirmed whether the persons of interest are the actual shooters. He has not provided a timeline for arrests. He has offered careful language about "conversations" police "need to have."

Careful language does not bring accountability. Three people are dead. A toddler was shot. A 15-year-old is locked up. And the adults who allegedly started the gunfire remain free, unnamed, uncharged, and apparently unhurried by a police department still sorting through video five weeks later.

When a city cannot protect families at a food festival, cannot alert the public for five hours, cannot keep its police chief, and cannot charge the people its own investigators believe started the shooting, the problem is not one teenager with a ghost gun. The problem is a city whose leaders have lost control, and whose residents are paying for it.