09/05/2008

Associated Press

A line of hearses bore the bodies of five victims of a Skagit County shooting rampage away from this town as onlookers watched from the sidewalk and wiped away tears.

The bodies were transported Thursday to the Snohomish County medical examiner's office in Everett, considered better equipped to handle the multiple autopsies. An autopsy was previously performed here on a sixth victim, Leroy Lange of Methow.

The attacks that killed six people and wounded four began Tuesday afternoon about 20 miles north of here near the tiny town of Alger. Dozens of investigators worked to process eight crime scenes in and around the town of fewer than 100 people.

Isaac Zamora, 28, was held on $5 million bail for investigation of murder and attempted murder.

The attacks that began near Alger, about 70 miles north of Seattle, continued amid a high-speed police pursuit on Interstate 5 and ended in Mount Vernon, when Zamora surrendered at a sheriff's office.

The dead included a 30-year grocery store checker, a man who enjoyed Sunday-night ballroom-dancing and a Skagit County sheriff's deputy killed in the line of duty.

Skagit County Deputy Coroner Bob Clark identified the dead as:

_Skagit County sheriff's Deputy Anne Jackson, 40;

_Chester M. Rose, 58, shot at the same location as Jackson near Alger;

_Two construction workers who were found shot nearby, David Thomas Radcliffe, 57, and Gregory Neil Gillum, 38, both of Mount Vernon;

_Julie A. Binschus, 48, of Sedro-Woolley, found a few houses away;

_Lange, a motorist who was shot and killed along the freeway.

Binschus was a 30-year employee at the Sedro-Woolley Food Pavilion.

Rose, a construction contractor, was a regular at the local tavern's weekly ballroom dancing nights.

Four other people, including a state trooper, suffered gunshot wounds or stabbings.

Neighbors remembered Zamora as a boy who struggled through adolescence and was later diagnosed with serious mental illness and showed disturbing signs of violence.

Zamora had been admitted several times to hospitals for mental health treatment and attempted suicide several times, his friends and family said.

After the family's home burned down when he was 14, a doctor diagnosed him as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder but said his problems would likely subside after puberty, his mother, Dennise Zamora, told The Seattle Times.

But in the past five years, Zamora has been in and out of courtrooms, accused of malicious mischief, drug possession and theft, and was last released from jail about a month ago after serving six months for cocaine possession.

Zamora's record includes about 50 court cases in Washington state, the Skagit Valley Herald reported. Most were misdemeanors ranging from driving on a suspended license to possession of marijuana, but eight cases were felonies, including three before he turned 18.

In 2007, he was convicted of malicious mischief for throwing a cement block at a neighbor's car. "Isaac Zamora was mad because I didn't go hiking with him, he has anger and mental health issues," the neighbor, Steven Schnur, wrote in court records.

Ex-girlfriend Connie Hickman, who met Zamora in 2000 when they both worked at a health care facility, told The Seattle Times that he had a lot of promise, but signs of trouble kept recurring. Hickman said his growing volatility eventually led her to take out protection orders and leave the state, and that she has had no contact with him for about three years.

He made threats and started fights over "things that never happened," Hickman said. She initially blamed his drinking and drug use, but then he was diagnosed with both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and told her at one point he was hearing voices.

In 2003, Hickman and Dennise Zamora took him to a Whatcom County hospital, saying they feared for their safety. He was held involuntarily for a few weeks of treatment and then released.

"The night after he was released, he called me and said, 'I want to go back,'" she recalled. But when he showed up again at the hospital, it declined to admit him. The reason why is unclear, but state rules concerning uninsured treatment for mental illness can be difficult to negotiate for patients and their families.

Eventually, he was admitted to another hospital. During that stay, court records show he bit an orderly who was trying to restrain him. Criminal charges were filed, but later dropped.

"The next day, they discharged him," Hickman said. "How could they put him out on the streets when it was obvious the man had some issues?"

She said he was given a prescription for medicine but didn't take it because he didn't have a job and couldn't pay for it.