Nordheim Court Thoughts As a Resident
As someone who lives at Nordheim in a building very close to the incident and has used that laundry room for ages, I absolutely agree with all the sentiments of not letting people tailgate. However tailgating is one of the LEAST common issues Nordheim has — we simply don’t have the student population traveling in and out of the buildings like dorms do. This safety issue was MAJORLY on Nordheim court management. The door to the room where the murder occurred has been broken for AGES. It used to be card access only, with the door just outside having a code access, but the doors lock has been broken for quite a while now and the doors lock just sits essentially wide open at all times. Getting in is laughably easy, and this senseless death could have been easily prevented had any sort of maintenance been done.
Additionally, nordheim court emergency lines should not be as inaccessible as they are. If you listen to the police radio links provided in some of the other threads on this topic, it is RIDICULOUS how long it takes the POLICE to get ahold of anyone in charge. Police could not drive into the garage to get close to the room initially because they didn’t have card access and NO ONE picked up the phone calls. UW Alert sent out their first notification at 10:44 pm (which on its own was quite an amount of time past when police were on scene), but Nordheim court did not send anything out until 1:56 AM which essentially amounted to “Police are currently on-site responding to a report of an altercation on property that became violent.” No shit! Think most of us figured that out!
This door issue is not the only issue Nordheim has had. One of its buildings was without elevator access for about 4 months, and as someone who needed elevator access after being hospitalized, it was absolutely ridiculous that it took four months to get fixed. You mean to tell me there were no other contractors in all of Seattle who were able to work on the elevator more than once every two weeks for about half a day?? Heavens forbid they spend money on the apartments they own!
At what point does trying to save costs on repairs end up just hurting residents? I’d like to think we pay enough in rent for the building to not be left in a state of permanent disarray around us…
My heart goes out to the victim and their friends and family in this difficult time. I’m sorry that this has happened, and I’m sad and angry at the systems that have failed us all.