Burien woman pleads not guilty to Seattle Parks Dept. shooting

A Burien woman will remain in jail after pleading not guilty to shooting a fellow Seattle Parks and Recreation employee.

At the King County Courthouse Monday morning, 46-year-old Carolyn Piksa stood in front of a judge and plead not guilty to shooting 65-year-old Bill Keller inside a parks department building in early March.

She’s accused of threatening another Parks employee, Cynthia Etelamaki, before she was arrested at her Burien home later in the day.

Piksa, an assistant coordinator for community centers in Seattle told police after the arrest she believed Keller and Etelamaki, the Bitter Lake Community Center coordinator, were involved in some sort of “game of manipulation” which Piksa could never win.

Charging documents said Piksa believed Keller and Etalamaki were conspiring to have money taken from her bank account, delete contacts from her cell phone and making noises at night that kept her from sleeping. She said she wanted to “find out how to get out of the game.”

Piksa told detectives “I knew he wasn’t saying what should have been said” after confronting him in his offer and pointed her .357 revolver at Keller.

Keller pleaded with her not to shoot him in the head, so Piksa shot him once in the chest instead.

Keller told police while he knew Piksa, they did not have much interaction and had never had any conflicts.

She told police after shooting him, she got her lunch from the office refrigerator and headed to the Bitter Lake community center.

Piksa reportedly confronted Etelamaki and asked if she had spoken with Keller. She threatened to shoot her longtime colleague and told police she would have shot her if she did not get the answers she demanded. Etelamaki was able to flee and call 911.

In court on Monday, her attorney would not discuss specifics of Piksa’s state of mind and he declined to ask the judge to reduce her bail.

KIRO Radio’s Tim Haeck contributed to this report.