Brent McDonald and his partner, Danielle Logan, in 2011. McDonald was shot early Sunday morning in Belltown. His killer has not yet been caught. Photo courtesy of Danielle Logan
When Claudia Stelle flips on the lights, the woodworking room at Coyote Central reveals a dozen half-finished projects. There’s a soapbox derby car waiting for a steering mechanism, a small cabinet with a headboard that reads “El jefe,” and a whiteboard with various name-tags stuck to it: Hannah, Lorelai, Mara, Brent.
Brent McDonald was teaching a group of immigrant and refugee middle school students the week before he was shot early Sunday morning on Third Avenue, between Lenora Street and Blanchard. The 49-year-old artist had been teaching woodworking and welding at Coyote Central, a Central District nonprofit that provides creative programming to adolescents, for 11 years.
The most recent data from the Seattle Police Department, up to November 23, shows 15 gun deaths in the city this year. McDonald's death added to the list.
Hours after the shooting, McDonald's fellow artist-teachers at Coyote Central got the call. “We came in and the phone rang,” Timothy Siciliano, a collaborator of McDonald’s, remembers. “[A co-worker] was over there, and I could tell something weird or horrible happened. I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ and she fell into my arms.’”
Stelle, Coyote Central’s executive director, isn’t quite sure what’s going to happen next semester. McDonald’s students, all English language learners from the Seattle World School, were scheduled to come back in January.
“Everybody is so, so sorry and saddened by it,” Stelle says. “Fellow artists are all broken up about it.”
Stelle points out various projects around the woodworking and metal shop: a sculpture made of spoons, a lopsided robot. One of the cabinets made by a student had Christmas lights framed around his name, Pedro.
“I never saw Brent in a bad mood,” Stelle says. “A gentleman. And just very warm and present. He was not about art with a capital A. It’s really about creativity in anything that you do. He was just sort of a creative person in life.”
McDonald, far right, leaves behind his partner, Danielle (far left) and her daughter Indigo (second from right). Photo courtesy of Danielle Logan
The Seattle Police Department is enlisting the public’s help in finding McDonald’s killer. On Tuesday, the SPD released security camera footage showing two suspects, a man and a woman, along with a light-colored station wagon, maybe a Mercedes Benz.
When McDonald's body was taken to Harborview Medical Center, police were able to find his emergency contact, McDonald's partner, Danielle Logan, because of one earlier Harborview record: Years ago, McDonald accidentally sawed off the index and middle finger of his left hand in the woodshop. Surgeons were able to reattach the middle finger, but the index finger remained short.
“After that you could hardly hear a word of complaint out of him,” remembers Christine Edgar, a close friend and housemate of McDonald's. “As soon as the doctor said, ‘Yeah, you could use your hand,’ I would find him straightening stuff. He was in terrible pain, but he really wanted to get his hand working again. I hardly ever saw him wince.”
Edgar’s daughter became close friends with McDonald's stepdaughter, Indigo (Alleya) Logan, through school. Several years into the friendship, Danielle Logan, Indigo, and Brent ended up moving in with Edgar and her family after the accident with McDonald's hand. Together, they called their red brick split-level in Maple Leaf the “Brady Bunch” house, where Brent built raised beds and arranged artful outdoor rooms in the summer.
“[He was] gentle, quiet, really warm, curious about all kinds of things,” Edgar says. “He was one of those people who was of few words, but when he spoke it was really insightful.”
McDonald’s friends and family also describe him as someone who cared deeply about his students and had a unique way of connecting with them. The kids called him "McDude."
“He really brought out the best in people and made them better people, just by caring and listening and actually respecting who they were as individuals,” Logan, McDonald’s partner, says. “So many adults don't give kids the time of day and don't respect them or take them seriously. Brent was so amazing at doing that.”
One of McDonald’s biggest contributions to the city was his role in Hit the Streets, a Coyote Central summer program that paid kids a stipend to create works of public art. McDonald had been a fixture in the program since 2004.
Artist Carl Smool, a close friend of McDonald’s and frequent collaborator, remembers working on a Hit the Streets project in 2012 that was particularly ambitious. Smool and McDonald worked with 15 middle school students to build giant, solar-powered lanterns out of bamboo, reed, and silk. The creations hung in the Seattle Center to celebrate the institution’s 50th anniversary.
“One was an eight-foot-long polar bear skeleton done by a 12-year-old girl,” Smool says. “Brent was a significant enabler in the classroom that I think surprised everybody—at the sheer ambitious nature.”
Whittnee LaChapelle has three children, two of whom were taught by McDonald. She credits McDonald with encouraging his students to pursue their own creativity and build confidence. “It’s definitely a loss for the community because he’s done a lot of really wonderful things for a lot of people,” she says.
Brent McDonald was a 49-year-old artist who had a gift for teaching woodworking and welding to middle school kids. Photo courtesy of Danielle Logan
Christine Edgar and Danielle Logan don’t think McDonald was targeted. He didn’t have any enemies, they say.
Sometimes if McDonald was working late at Coyote Central, he’d take the 3 bus up to Belltown, where he used to live. He’d meet with old friends at Shorty’s or the Lava Lounge before taking the bus back. That’s what Edgar thinks McDonald was likely doing in Belltown when he was shot.
“Sometimes we think it was a mistaken identity,” Edgar says. “We have been speculating wildly about stuff. Maybe it started out as a robbery, maybe he recognized them. Who knows? We don’t know.”
Logan wants people who knew Brent to know that they can reach out to her. The flood of donations and heartfelt messages have touched the family deeply.
As for McDonald’s killer(s), Logan says: “The person who did this obviously hates himself enough so I don’t need to hate him… Just the callousness, and how far from love that person already has to live and feel? I can’t even imagine a worse hell. I can’t. I just don’t have any hate in my heart.”
Logan's favorite piece of McDonald’s sits at the entrance to Powell Barnett Park, on East Jefferson Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. It’s a mosaic of three pairs of hands clasping, woven in with pieces from middle school students. So much of McDonald’s work was temporary, or taken home by kids, but this one lasts.
“He was an artist in every sense of the word,” Logan says. “In word, in action, in thinking outside of the box, in encouraging people. He wasn't just an artist. He was a really amazing person who was really inspirational and really in tune with people.”
A mosaic by McDonald at Powell Barnett Park. SB
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