SPU shooting suspect wanted to ‘kill as many as possible,’ sorry for causing suffering
Jun 6, 2014, 1:06 PM | Updated: 4:05 pm
The attorney for a man suspected of killing one student in a shooting rampage at Seattle Pacific University says he’s sorry for the suffering he has caused.
Public defender Ramona Brandes said Aaron Ybarra, 26, is on suicide watch at the jail.
In a court appearance Friday, a judge ordered Ybarra held without bail on suspicion of first degree murder and first degree assault. He has not been charged.
According to court documents, Ybarra admitted to detectives he shot the victims. He also said he had been planning a mass shooting and wanted to kill as many victims as possible before killing himself.
Brandes said Ybarra has longstanding mental health issues and has been treated and medicated in the past, though she did not know his specific diagnoses.
Brandes said she’ll be exploring those mental-health issues as she moves forward with his case.
Ybarra was hospitalized for mental health evaluations twice in recent years, said Pete Caw, assistant police chief in Ybarra’s hometown, the Seattle suburb of Mountlake Terrace.
Officers encountered Ybarra in 2010 and 2012. Both times, he was severely intoxicated and taken to Swedish Hospital in Edmonds for evaluation, Caw said. In the October 2012 incident, police found Ybarra lying in a roadway.
He was arrested on suspicion of DUI in nearby Edmonds in 2012, said Edmonds police Sgt. Mark Marsh.
“The standard is ‘unable to care for yourself or others’ or a ‘threat to yourself or others,’ and obviously when you’re that highly intoxicated, you’re unable to care for yourself. That’s the standard in which he was taken to the hospital under,” Caw said.
“We just hope he’s safe,” the suspect’s father, Ambrose Ybarra, told The Seattle Times on Thursday. “It’s upsetting to have these accusations thrown around. We’re in emergency mode. We are trying to stay calm.”
A woman who answered a cellphone listing for Ybarra’s mother, Janice, declined to comment, saying “I will be speaking later.”
Ybarra is not a student at the school, police said.
Investigators searched a house in the north Seattle suburb of Mountlake Terrace believed to be tied to Ybarra late Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
