A Navy veteran who plays music near Seattle’s waterfront says he’s just thankful to be alive after being shot in broad daylight during a confrontation that prosecutors are calling both senseless and deliberate.
Harold Powell Sr.’s family believes the attack was a hate crime. Powell is Black, and his attacker is white.
“More shocked I think than anything else. I just got hit really hard right here in the chest where he hit me real close,” said Harold Powell, describing the moment he was shot on July 31 outside the Starbucks at Pier 55.
The 68-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the chest but was released days later.
“I seen the slug. I can see the heat of the slug coming at me and then just, ‘boom!’ Knocked me back,” he recounted to local station KIRO. “I just went to ‘I’m gonna die’ so let me call my family. Forget everything else. It’s just all I thought, I wasn’t worried about nothing else.”
The bullet cracked his ribs but miraculously missed his vital organs. “[Doctors] didn’t believe it: after all these x-rays that I can live after being shot like that,” he said.
Powell’s naval career ended after he was struck by a drunk driver in 1991. Since 1995, he’s been a fixture along Seattle’s waterfront, performing music for donations.
“I know people down there, they know me. We’re kind of a family. There is a family. You know, they expect to see me. I see them,” he said.
That sense of community was shattered when prosecutors say 32-year-old Gregory William Timm confronted Powell over accusations of “stolen valor.”
On the evening of July 31, Powell was sitting in his wheelchair along the Seattle waterfront, playing music as he had for nearly three decades, when Timm walked up. According to charging documents and video reviewed by prosecutors, the encounter turned hostile almost immediately.
Timm accused Powell of lying about his military service and shouted that he was guilty of “stolen valor.” He demanded that Powell show military identification, and at one point ripped a military patch from Powell’s wheelchair, reports show.
Powell tried to retrieve his ID, but tensions escalated as he also reached for a small knife from his bag for protection. He had a holstered airsoft gun, which resembled a real firearm, attached to his chair. A video of the incident shows Powell pulling it out of his bag.
That’s when, prosecutors allege, Timm stepped back about 12 feet, pulled a .45 caliber handgun from a shoulder bag, and fired once directly into Powell’s chest.
Startled bystanders screamed and scattered, some shielding children as Powell slumped in his chair.
He then slid his pistol back into his bag, raised his hands, and shouted reassurances to witnesses: “It’s all right, everybody!”
Timm, meanwhile, continued yelling at Powell to “show me your ID,” and accused him of pulling a gun.
A Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife officer nearby heard the gunfire and rushed over, detaining Timm on the spot. Seattle police arrived moments later, recovered the handgun, and placed him under arrest.
Timm is no stranger to politically charged violence. In 2020, he made national headlines after plowing his car into a Republican voter registration tent in Jacksonville, Florida. At the time, he told police he “did not like President Trump” and later testified that he believed his actions were his “duty.”
Now, King County prosecutors have charged him with first-degree assault, a Class A felony that carries the potential for life in prison. His bail has been set at $750,000.
Casey McNerthney, spokesperson for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said Timm cannot claim self-defense when he provoked the altercation. “If you’re the one who’s the first aggressor who provokes an altercation, you lose the right to claim self-defense effectively under state law,” McNerthney told King 5.
Powell’s children have launched a GoFundMe to help cover the enormous costs of his recovery, describing their father as a proud Black man, a disabled hero, and a survivor of both war and systemic injustice.
“A few days ago, our lives were shattered,” the family wrote. “Our dad was targeted in what we believe was a hate crime and shot in the chest in a senseless act of violence. After everything he’s survived, Vietnam-era submariner, injury, disability, and systemic injustice, he is now fighting for his life again in a hospital room. The road ahead is long.”
The family says Powell will need help with medical bills, therapy, mobility aids, and basic living expenses while he’s unable to work.
“This isn’t just about survival — it’s about justice, healing, and dignity,” the fundraiser reads. “He has served, he has sacrificed, and now he needs his community to rally around him.”
