Kettle plans to hold another hearing in September to examine the city's response to the shooting.
Seattle's interim police chief said investigators are making progress in finding additional suspects who were involved in the shooting at the Bite of Seattle event last month.
Interim Chief Andre Sayles told the Seattle City Council's Public Safety Committee on Tuesday that detectives are combing through extensive video evidence, and obtaining new search warrants related to the case.
"Once we get the evidence we need from our detectives looking at the video, some social media things, I think we’ll have a better response and a better idea if there’s an actual killer on the loose right now,” Sayles said under questioning from committee vice chair Rob Saka.
Investigators believe teenage gang members were shooting at each other in the crowd, leading to three deaths and several other injuries. A 15-year-old was arrested at the scene. Court records allege he fired a gun during the shootout, but police do not believe any of his shots hit the people who died. Investigators said one of the deceased - 19-year-old Junior Niko-Semo - was also involved in the shootout.
Sayles initially said police were looking for a third person who ran off. Councilmember Saka pressed Sayles to release more information about that suspect at Tuesday's hearing.
"Are you able to provide a description of what they were wearing?" Saka said.
"There was a potential identification of a blue shirt. That's as far as I'll go with that," Sayles responded.
"A blue shirt — about three weeks after the incident — that's better than nothing," Saka responded. "The public deserves to know more information about whether there's a potential killer on the loose."
The at-times contentious hearing focused on the confusion in the hours after the shooting and why it took hours for officials to announce they had taken a suspect into custody and did not believe the shooting was an act of terror or targeted at the event itself.
Mayor Katie Wilson has called for an investigation by the city's Office of Inspector General (OIG) to review the breakdown in communication after the shooting.
Several council members have criticized the mayor and her staff for not being transparent with the timeline of actions in the hours after the shooting and whether the mayor's staff instructed Seattle police to delay releasing information to the public and press.
"I don't think we need an investigation. I think you could tell us right now why the press conference was delayed," Councilmember Debora Juarez told Alison Holcomb, the mayor's director of public safety, at Tuesday's hearing. "I think you could say, but you just don't want to."
A police spokesperson told the press at the scene that a press conference was being delayed to allow "dignitaries" to get to the scene. Twenty minutes later, Mayor Wilson approached the press, flanked by Gov. Bob Ferguson and Representative Pramila Jayapal, and addressed the press before allowing Assisting Chief Tyrone Davis to provide a rundown of the shooting for the first time that night.
The delayed press conference has become a flashpoint of significant criticism for the mayor's office. The mayor has repeatedly denied that her office delayed or restrained police from releasing information ahead of the press conference five hours after the shooting.
KOMO News reporter Chris Daniels obtained an email from police spokesperson Brian Pritchard to his superiors that said the Mayor's office characterization of the response as "not accurate".
Ferguson and Jayapal's staff have denied they had anything to do with the delay. On Tuesday, councilmember Bob Kettle released a detailed timeline of his actions on the night of the shooting.
Kettle plans to hold another hearing in September to examine the city's response to the shooting.
