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 Linda Thomas
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Linda is the morning news anchor and features reporter for KIRO Radio. This is her local news blog, with an emphasis on social media, technology, Northwest companies, education, parenting, and anything else that grabs her attention.

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CafeRacer.jpg
A mourner pays respect to the Cafe Racer shooting victims, May 30, 2012. Ian Stawicki killed five people in Seattle before turning the gun on himself that day. His father supports legislation that prevents mentally ill people from getting their hands on guns. (Robert Sorbo photo)

Guns and mental illness, an '800 pound fish on a two ounce line'

January 15, 2013 @ 5:18 pm (Updated: 9:56 am - 1/16/13 )

Walter's son was smart, but struggled in school.

"He had a lot of learning disabilities. He'd come home crying," Walt recalls.

Whether it was because classmates picked on him in school, older kids pushed him around on the bus, or a teacher labeling him "stupid," Ian seemed to have a lot of reasons to be upset.

"Before high school, 7th or 8th grade in a south end school, he came home just bawling his head off one day. I grappled with him, took him to the floor and had my wife call the police," he says. "About a half hour later he started calming down. We never found out what that was about."

As he got older, Walt suspected his son probably had some kind of mental illness.

"He was for the most part sane, but when he wasn't he certainly wasn't," he says.

Walt and his wife were never afraid of Ian.

If he started saying things most of us would consider bizarre, they always managed to calm their son down.

"His mother and I would say, 'No, no, no, that's not how you talk about people' and he would stop. He would pull himself together.

Walt tried to get counseling services for his son as he approached his 20s and then 30s. He always thought he'd have more time to get him professional help.

Time ran out May 30, 2012 at 10:57 a.m.

"9-1-1 what are you reporting?"

"I'm at Roosevelt and 59th at Cafe Racer, there's been a shooting. Somebody came in and shot a bunch of people. I'm hiding in the bathroom."

"Hold on sir."

"We need help right away."

Walt Stawicki got a phone call from his wife.

"She said, 'Get down here' I just saw our son on TV,' Stawicki says as he relives the moment and lets out a heavy sigh. "'What happened?' 'He shot people.''

Ian Stawicki took the lives of four people near the University District and one woman in downtown Seattle. Then, surrounded by police in West Seattle, he killed himself.

Walt's struggle to guide, control, and help his son for 40 years was like handling an "800 pound fish on a two ounce line."

The line snapped.

"I don't want to do another sob story about me and my experience," he says. "I want to talk about what we can do. That's what keeps me floating is that there's something more and I don't have time to feel sorry for myself and retire and hide."

What would have helped Ian Stawicki and prevented the murders of five people in Seattle last May?

Walt Stawicki thinks the national "grand standing" about gun control and banning weapons makes people feel as though something is being accomplished.

Despite Ian Stawicki's mental instability, he had no problem getting his hands on weapons.

"He had a concealed-carry permit. He, like myself, could walk into a store say, 'I want that one,' lay the money down, show the permit and walk out with that pistol," says Stawicki.

He supports New York's legislation which requires mental health counselors to report when someone makes a credible threat involving weapons.

There is a flaw with the new law, he says. It assumes there is a solid system in place to handle the mentally ill. That's not the case, in his experience.

"We need to have assisted outpatient treatment with a court mandate that has a hammer that can drop," he says. "You can either obey and live your life out there, or you can be locked up until you come around and understand what's going on."

By LINDA THOMAS

More from Linda Thomas

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Comments (44)


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  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    Oh no. I'm reallyh *not* all that picky on spelling, but there is a drastic difference between somebody
    January 15, 2013 7:49 pm
    "bawling" their head off and

    "balling" their head off.

    Nobody can effectively edit their own material. The eye thinks it sees what the mind thinks is there. Tell KIRO to step up and at least get one of the interns to proofread your stuff. It's too good to suffer from disastrous misspellings. :-)

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  • sambra27 wrote...
    balling
    January 15, 2013 10:28 pm
    Must have been a pretty intense basketball game if the police had to be called...only kidding and i mean no disrespect. Gotta imagine its difficult for this guy to relive these moments
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  • Ron_Spins wrote...
    Anal Retentive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_retentiveness
    January 15, 2013 10:10 pm
    So what!Some big shots have even tried to straighten my English out here!..Is that all you got?
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  • Ron_Spins wrote...
    James Yeager (example) http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/341154
    January 16, 2013 1:10 am
    Hot head , this is a perfect example of someone's C.P.L being yanked.
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  • SickofSeattleite wrote...
    i have a mentlaly ill Uncle.....there are no laws to help or protect him
    January 16, 2013 5:49 am
    he stabbed someone last year and now is finally and sadly locked up...when he is on his meds he is fine.....it is sad we had to wait for him to almost kill someone to get him somewhere he can't hurt himself or others. In my opinion he could have had a productive fulfilling life if there was a facility to help him...but we are not allowed to force him to do anything and now we do not have a choice and he is in jail.
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  • flipper wrote...
    And so...
    January 16, 2013 6:51 am
    ...why didn't we outlaw knives for everyone?
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  • Annie (1) wrote...
    Sorry...but
    January 16, 2013 6:21 am
    It must be awful for the Stawicki family-really I can hardly imagine what try are going through-- but KIRO has talked with Mr.Stawicki a few times now & never ask for or get from him specifics about what measures were tried --to get help for their son. I am not condemning them- but knowing what was tried - how & why it didn't work could surely give insight into what needs to change . It's not just the availability of guns- help- real help for the mentally ill is imperative. It sounds like Ian Stawicki had mental/ emotional problems from the time he was young- that worsened over time. KIRO--instead of accepting the murky" we tried to get help" response- how about an in depth report about the specific actions that were taken & what did or didn't work . Maybe then we'd have an idea of where to start making the much needed changes in our mental health system .
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  • TheNewsChick wrote...
    Specifics
    January 16, 2013 6:43 am
    Annie, I'll add details after the morning show. In short, he wants assisted outpatient treatment with a court mandate.
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  • Annie (1) wrote...
    Not my point!
    January 16, 2013 9:16 am
    Assisted outpatient management treatment with a court mandate is what he wants- I want to know what exactly he tried over the years that did not work & why. What agencies- legal systems - doctors- did he go through- what was their response & if they couldn't or wouldn't help why not? He says his son was " for the most part sane, but when he wasn't , he certainly wasn't" He also says he tried to get his son counseling in his 20's & 30's- but doesn't say what happened- did his son refuse to go? Did an agency refuse to see/ treat him? I don't want to point a finger at this family- but I want to know where the flaws in the system are so we can start fixing them .Education for all of us in recognizing mental illness is a good place to start- but if there aren't resources easily available - then what? To me-- this is the story here- not just a brushing the surface headline like " an 800 pound fish on a two ounce line" . As usual lately at KIRO catchy headline-- no substance . .
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  • itiswhatitis wrote...
    The point is.....
    January 16, 2013 1:23 pm
    Once your child turns 18 they are "legally" an adult. They can choose to not receive care, they can leave the house w/o you knowing where they are. If your child has issues, and you are going to be dealing with alot of kids on the autistic spectrum that will be happening with alot of young adults, I can tell you, this will be a problem for the few that are very frustrated and aren't getting or responding to the help. It is tiring, it is exhausting and I do feel very sorry for all involved with this incident.
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  • Las Paled wrote...
    My Experience...
    January 17, 2013 4:44 am
    It's hard to explain how challenging it is to get people help. My adult daughter suffers from mental illness (schizophrenia) and I am afraid that she will do something tragic to herself or others as well. One experience: she lives with her mother in another state now, a state that has better mental health facilities than the one I live in. When she went missing I went to go find her and when I did she was clearly out of her mind. I got her to an Psychiatric Urgent Care and they took her in after evaluation. This had been the 5th time she had been in this clinic over the course of 12 months. Her case workers change constantly so there is no real history of her circumstance. They released her 3 days later because she was again "stable". Neither her mother nor I can get any additional information due to Hipaa laws. Any information about her medication or treatment procedures is only shared with us if our daughter chooses to share it with us. After a few days of "stability" she stops taking her medications because she doesn't like to be on the meds and the cycle starts over again. Until she violates any laws she is free to do this. She has specifically asked to be taken into a long term facility because in lucid moments she recognizes the cycle and her lack of self control and wants long term help. But her condition only qualifies her for outpaitient treatment and my insurance wont pay the $930 a day to get her into a long term facility.
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  • Forrest wrote...
    Universal healthcare including mental healthcare...
    January 16, 2013 7:09 am
    Is the answer, not gun control. It's time to join the rest of the modern world. The primary function of government is the protection of it's citizens.
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  • Seattle Dad wrote...
    Uh no.
    January 16, 2013 7:56 am
    Why do we believe that tossing everyone into a catchall system designed by politicians at the Federal government will fix anything. The list of what the Federal government is capable of doing well is staggering. The perception of free healthcare is a dangerous path to head down Forrest.
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  • Forrest wrote...
    Seattle Dad wrote...
    January 16, 2013 8:30 am
    "Why do we believe that tossing everyone into a catchall system designed by politicians at the Federal government will fix anything".

    Letting the mentally ill wonder the streets without any help certainly isn't working either.

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  • maplefish wrote...
    Forrest
    January 16, 2013 7:05 pm
    Good point, but what would you recommend ???
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  • waltinseattle wrote...
    what states are for
    January 16, 2013 11:11 am
    we could have 50 states doing parallell procesding of what constitutes best practice. but we have one size fits all and the fathers who art in D.. C. know best.. sad they could coordinate us like they do with interstate route placement. like they could with interstate firearms purchasers.like they do with radio frequencies. as for mental health dangers in our streets? our streets, our work to do. start with what we dont need any d "permissions" to do. fight the resistors in city,county and state.
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  • Seattle Dad wrote...
    There is no system
    January 16, 2013 7:54 am
    that supports the analysis by a mental health professional to protect society from people with mental illness. It should be complimentary to the criminal system. SOME with mental illness pose a threat to society and themselves but I see no institutions where these people can be placed in a controlled environment. Gun control is a tired solution. Mental health is a gaping hole in our system.
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  • Forrest wrote...
    Seattle Dad wrote...
    January 16, 2013 8:55 am
    "SOME with mental illness pose a threat to society and themselves but I see no institutions where these people can be placed in a controlled environment".

    That's my point. Through universal healthcare, including mental healthcare, we can help those who need the help rather than incarcerating them after they commit a heinous crime. Our current system is to jail the mentally ill and pump them full of drugs till they are coherent. Then we execute them or turn them out on the street to commit additional crimes.

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  • Rainwaves wrote...
    See post on page 2
    January 16, 2013 8:03 pm
    I wrote a comment addressing these issues about the mental institutions and trying to commit someone. This is first hand knowledge from my grandfather who worked on a 400 acre institution before it closed. The government deemed these institutions unnessary, now look at where it got us.
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  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    There will always be nut jobs. There will always be guns.
    January 16, 2013 8:03 am
    No law will eliminate either, and they will always find a way to get together.

    The answer isn't even to carry a bigger, badder, gun. It isn't even to try to avoid getting killed in the first few rounds the nut job fires off and then pull your gun, be the hero, and take him out. For every "almost never" instance in which such a scenario has played out, those guns purchased in the fantasy of punching holes in the bad guys and saving the day wind up killing kids who find them around the house. They wind up getting used in a family argument. They wind up being stolen by one of the bad guys. You exercise careful stewardship of your weapons, and then after you die the family offers them at a garage sale and they are purchased by who knows who?

    Cops, expected to be the hero and kill the bad guy, (and killed themselves trying to do just that around the country every year), spend 100's of hours at the firing range. They are less likely than John Q. Hero to shoot and kill an innocent bystander when everybody is scrambling around trying to find or improve cover during the chaos of a massacre.

    No good answer has come forth yet. Not from the crowd that says "round up all the guns" or the crowd that says "round up all the crazies (zeig heil, let me start my list of "crazies") and give everybody able to carry one a weapon".

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  • William Lawn wrote...
    ATTENTION EVERYBODY!!!!!
    January 16, 2013 10:58 am
    Flounder.

    That is all.

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  • DesertRez wrote...
    What a joke this all is
    January 16, 2013 12:17 pm
    The pols point fingers at the NRA; the NRA points fingers at the video game industry; the gamers point fingers at the movies producers....In the end the pols will ban scary looking guns like the AK in my safe, which is right next to my - twice the power and range - semi-auto 308. In the end it will prevent nothing. If you are really worried about being shot then try hard not to be black in Chicago. Barring that, I will go to Detroit next year and the same urine smelling crazy hobos will be walking the streets, Obamacare or no Obamacare.
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  • maplefish wrote...
    DesertRez
    January 16, 2013 7:24 pm
    Touché
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