Colby Tran, a recent graduate from Seattle’s Garfield High School, remembers when he was deciding which high school he’d attend.
“When I was thinking about coming to Garfield, I would look up Garfield and it's: ‘basketball champions’, ‘best jazz program of all time, ever,’” Tran said.
But in the last few years, the Garfield community in and around the school has been devastated by gun violence. Tran said that’s reshaped the school’s reputation.
“You look up Garfield on Google [now] and it's just shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting,” Tran said.
In 2024 more than 60 children and teens under the age of 18 in King County were the victims of gun violence — a number that has doubled in the last five years, according to the county.
One of those shootings took place just outside of the school.
On June 6, 2024, popular football player Amarr Murphy-Paine was shot. According to authorities, he was attempting to break up a fight. His death left many of his classmates in disbelief.
That experience led them to create a documentary film project, called True Dawgs: A Garfield Story.
The goal of the film is to help students process their grief — and to reclaim their school’s identity.
‘Best of my bad options’
Garfield is by no means the only high school in Western Washington that has had to cope with the effects of gun violence.
A student was fatally shot at Ingraham High School in 2022.
In 2024, a Kamiak High School student was arrested in connection with the shooting death of a 13-year-old child at Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood.
This year, a Mount Tahoma High School student in Tacoma was shot to death. There was another shooting outside Tacoma’s Lincoln High School.
The death of Murphy-Paine in June 2024 shook the Garfield campus to its core.
“I always noticed that after something bad happens, like after there's a shooting, or after one of our students loses their life, no matter which group you're in it's always the same feeling at Garfield,” Tran said. “You feel like every single time it just gets to you more, and it feels inevitable.”
“It's scary to think about,” fellow student Princess Green said. “What's going to happen if I walk out of school, what's going to happen if I'm trying to get lunch, or if I'm trying to get home?”
Green was finishing up her sophomore year when Murphy-Paine was shot and killed.
“Going into my junior year, I didn't really want to come back to Garfield,” Green said. “To be honest, it was the best of my bad options.”
Green and Tran are among the group of students who came together for a project to address youth mental health and gun violence.
The name of the documentary, True Dawgs, is a reference to a cheer often heard at the school's pep rallies.
To help reclaim Garfield's identity after the tragedy, the students interviewed their peers and family members who had attended the school. They also spoke to longtime staff members who had seen Garfield in better times.
The documentary also features archived video of musical performances, basketball championship celebrations and pep rallies.
Moving through traumatic events
Filmmaker Brooke Montgomery helped the students make the documentary. Montgomery’s daughter attends Garfield.
Montgomery looked at the epidemic of youth violence and felt a sense of helplessness.
“But I kept seeing my daughter and her friends and the pain and the struggle they were going through, and I was like, ‘I have to participate, somehow,'” Montgomery said. “I make films. I make movies. I make videos. Maybe I can lend my skills.”
Montgomery met with the students and started to storyboard what the film would look like.
“We were with them for over six months… and so you get to watch how people move through traumatic events,” Montgomery said.
“I don't think you could find a parent who has a kid in high school, or a younger grade in this country” who hasn't spent time worrying about their child and gun violence, Montgomery said.
As the group continued working on the documentary last spring, another Garfield student lost his life.
Salvador “Junior” Granillo was attending a party in Yakima when he was shot and killed.
“Even if you didn’t know Junior, you felt it when he was gone,” Tran said. “He was in my business math class and we just left his chair there for the rest of the year. No one can fill that hole that Junior left. He brought a smile to everyone’s face.”
Tran was deeply affected by Granillo’s death. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stay involved in the documentary.
Green understood how he felt.
“How do we push past gun violence? It’s hard to keep going when you’re just constantly having to experience that,” Green said. “And so that’s something we see in the documentary — in real time — happen.”
Dr. Ben Danielson runs the youth advocacy nonprofit AHSHAY Center and is the former medical director of the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in Seattle. He’s one of the producers of True Dawgs.
“It’s kind of a documentary about a documentary,” Danielson said. “It's about a process of watching people transform by being engaged and involved in something. It doesn't try to make for perfect outcomes or happy endings. It doesn't shy away from pain, because we cannot talk about this if we can't also talk about the painful parts.”
Danielson said one of the most important things he learned from the process of making the film was that teenagers want adults in their lives.
“We have let young people down,” Danielson said. “Until we come to grips with understanding our responsibility, our role, our opportunity, the amazing things that can happen by being in support of these young, brilliant people, we're just never going to make progress.”
Green, one of the student filmmakers, said mentoring programs can help provide them with space to talk about their feelings and get the community involved with the school.
“I think what we need is all-year support,” Tran said. “Really clear, like, this is a space where you can go just to let your feelings out,” Tran said.
As the documentary production wraps up, Green has started her senior year at Garfield, and Tran started his first year at Seattle University. True Dawgs: A Garfield Story is set for release in 2026.
This is the first in a three-part series called Agents of Change: Addressing Youth Violence – Lessons that Work.
