KING COUNTY, Wash. — King County is on pace to have a record number of homicides again.

After a weekend of murders in Ravensdale and Seattle, the King County Medical Examiner’s Office said there have been 117 confirmed homicides in the first three quarters of 2023.

There were 147 in all of 2022, which was an all-time high.

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“A lot of these incidents have impacted people that I know, family members of my staff. It's just hitting closer and closer to home,” said King County Council member Girmay Zahilay on Monday, who chairs the Council’s Law, Justice, Health and Human Services committee. His staff member lost her sister in the mass shooting outside a Seattle hookah bar in August.

“It's not just the police issue. This is a system-wide issue, and the COVID-19 pandemic impacted all of our systems and created record vacancies in many of our departments, from mental health workers to bus drivers to law enforcement to courts," Zahilay continued.

Zahilay said the criminal justice system has also been overwhelmed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the case log. He said the public defender's office has had difficulty keeping up, and the strain has also been a complicating factor.

Casey McNerthney, spokesperson for the King County Prosecutor’s Office, agrees.

He also said there is not one key factor in the spike and that, in his estimate, 95% of the homicides have been charged. “There isn't a single reason. It's really concerning that we've seen road rage shootings go up. We've seen vehicular homicide go up. We've seen violent crime, and we've seen recently an increase in domestic violence.”

“Right now, in the system, there's more than 200 charged murder cases that are awaiting a resolution. So, it's one thing to have a case charged, and we've routinely charged murder cases, as soon as we get them, when we have the evidence to do it,” said McNerthney, who said there were eight different murder trials underway currently in King County. He could not recall a period when there were so many going on at the same time.”

“What we're also seeing is people getting guns way easier than they did even ten years ago, and we're seeing more rounds being fired,” he told KOMO News. “We're seeing 20 or 30 rounds, and the likelihood with more bullets, more shootings means more victims. And so that's another factor too.”

53-year-old Nick Valison was killed last Friday in a mysterious case in Ravensdale. McNerthney said he was unaware of any case file forwarded to his office for charging.