Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is Embedded from NPR. Today, we're starting a new series,

a partnership with the Seattle Times and KUOW, and it takes place in the summer of 2020.

Remember, that's when protests were happening all over the country after the killing of George Floyd.

But in Seattle, something happened that didn't really happen anywhere

else in the U.S. A standoff with protesters went on for days, and then the police actually

abandoned a precinct in the middle of the city, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. They just left.

And once they were gone, protesters set up an Occupy-style camp around it.

The camp was called Chop, the Capitol Hill occupied protest. Some people called it the Capitol Hill

organized protest. It was an experiment in a different kind of world, with its own medical

teams and its own armed security.

People there believed they were building a better version of society, one that rejected police violence.

But three weeks in, that experiment ended.

There was a shooting at the camp, and the gunfire came from the people who were actually trying to defend the camp.

A black teenager died.

Six years later, the case remains unsolved.

Over the next eight episodes, reporters Will James and Sydney Brownstone are going to take us inside chop to find out what happened the night of the shooting and how violence came to occupy this anti-violence occupation.

One more thing before we start, this episode includes explicit language and the sound of gun violence.

Okay, here's Sydney and Will.

I remember the shooting happened on a Monday morning, a few blocks from where I used to live in a neighborhood called Capitol Hill.

An editor called and asked if I could go down and report from the scene.

So I get dressed and I run out of my apartment.

Everything looks normal at first.

...