Another Tragedy

Another Tragedy

From the September 3, 2008 Seattle Times:

ALGER, Skagit County — The man arrested in the deaths of six people and the wounding of three others in a shooting and stabbing rampage here is being held for investigation of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder.

The suspect, 28-year-old Isaac Zamora of Alger, made his first court appearance this afternoon in District Court and is being held on $5 million bail.

...

Dennise Zamora, the suspect's mother, said Tuesday that her son is "extremely mentally ill" and had been living in the woods on and off for years. She said Jackson, the slain deputy, was aware of her son's illness and told the Zamora family to call her anytime for help.

After watching Isaac Zamora walk in and out of neighbors' homes, his mother called deputies on Tuesday. She said her son wasn't aware of his mental illness.

Dennise Zamora said she wished she could switch places with the people slain Tuesday.

"When I say I wish it was me and not them, I mean it from the bottom of my heart," she said, sobbing.

Dennise Zamora said her son had struggled with mental illness since their family's house burned down more than a decade ago. She said he was "agreeable" and "placid" Tuesday morning and that she didn't know what made him snap. She also said she didn't know where he got the gun used in the shootings.

This article from the September 4, 2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer says what I have been saying for some years, without effect:

The shooting rampage that left six dead Tuesday in Skagit County is the latest tragic incident involving a person with apparent mental illness who didn't get treatment in time to prevent violence.

Six more names to add to an already grim list: Sierra Club worker Shannon Harps, stabbed to death outside her Capitol Hill apartment last New Year's Eve; Jewish Federation employee Pamela Waechter, gunned down at work; Newport High School coach Mike Robb, shot in his car; firefighter Stan Stevenson, stabbed to death in a crosswalk walking back from a Mariners game; pregnant Kari Osterhaug, shot by her husband.

In each case, a person with severe, untreated mental illness has been charged or convicted in the killing.

And in each case, family members or others tried to intervene to get the suspect help before he committed a horrific crime but were stopped by Washington's strict commitment laws and overburdened, ineffective mental health care system.

Now it appears Isaac Zamora, 28, who was arrested after the shooting spree this week, may fit that same profile. His mother, who characterized her son as "increasingly psychotic," said she had tried for years to get him help without success.

"The laws are insane," Dennise Zamora said Wednesday. "He needed to be in a facility."

Her statements echo those of countless other families who say Washington's mental health system fails those who need it most.

A Seattle P-I analysis found the state is spending $1.8 billion on mental illness. But most is spent in courtrooms, squad cars, jail cells, homeless shelters and emergency rooms, not on prevention or long-term treatment. The biggest price taxpayers pay for mental illness in this state is not the cost of treatment -- it's the cost, and consequences, of failure to treat.

Isaac Zamora's lengthy court record contains a sprinkling of references to concerns over his mental health, including a 2003 reference to biting a staff member who was trying to restrain him at North Sound Evaluation and Treatment Center, a mental health clinic in Sedro-Woolley.

Zamora also was ordered by a Skagit County Superior Court judge to undergo a mental health evaluation as part of his court-ordered community supervision, said Department of Corrections spokesman Chad Lewis. Zamora was released Aug. 6, but that evaluation had not taken place before the shootings.

This pattern of not getting help soon enough is endemic to Washington's health care system.