This incident took place on Jan 16th, it was the first purge night of “Lake Stevens 2026 Senior Assassin.” where numerous seniors such as Shelby Clifton, Rylie Bradstreet and a couple more were held at gunpoint by police, some of whom were detained and set into police cars because of numerous calls coming in from multiple different sources describing a “Gang Shootout” of sorts happening in multiple places such as North Cove and Lundeen park. No one was inherently harmed during the interaction between police officers and students however it’s sure to be a memory they will never forget.

Lake Stevens Purge Night is where everyone taking place in senior assassin can attack anyone on the “hit list” and there is no protection unless your at work or school or during your club practice

I spoke with Keira Tupua about the incident, She wasn’t directly involved in it, however she is one of the two people who “run” senior assassin for the class of 2026. When she was asked if there were any changes made to the rules she said.

“Um, yes. So we, Cruz and I, we decided not to have anybody make scheduled times for, you know, nerf battles. So there’s no set time and date for any of that.” senior Kiera Tepua

When asking Rylie Bradstreet what happened at Lundeen Park she described it as.

“Basically, it was a lot of people just driving around at Lundeen Park and just trapping each other in trying to shoot each other with nerf guns for senior assassin” senior Rylie Bradstreet said.

When talking with multiple different people about their thoughts on the police involvement and how they went about it I got a mix of responses..

“ I think the whole situation was really silly, knowing that this has been a thing like Stevens for a very long time, and they should have known that there wasn’t any real guns at all. There was no gunshots, there was no like, violence whatsoever. It was all just a fun game and a joke.” Bradstreet said.

Then there is the other side of the argument in Clifton’s response when asked the question if her views had changed on the police that they were just doing their job.

“I wouldn’t say so because like, I think they were just doing there job” Clifton said .

This was a scary incident that is sure to go down in Lake Stevens history of senior assassin that could have gone a lot worse in many different ways. I’m sure every side is just glad no one got hurt in this event and that everyone made it out okay.