By Sara Jean Green
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — A man who claimed he was driven by the voices of God and Satan, and inspired by the deadly rampage at Columbine High School, was convicted Wednesday of killing one student and wounding two others at Seattle Pacific University in June 2014.
King County jurors had been deliberating the fate of Aaron Ybarra, 29, since Monday afternoon before returning the verdict after a month of testimony. Ybarra, who had a long history of mental illness, had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
The Mountlake Terrace man was found guilty of premeditated first-degree murder for the death of freshman Paul Lee, 19, of Portland, Ore., three counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of second-degree assault. Each count also carries a firearms enhancement as well as an “aggravator” because the shooting “involved a destructive and foreseeable impact on persons other than the victim” — namely, the entire Seattle Pacific University community.
Ybarra showed no outward emotion as the verdict was read.
Though Ybarra’s guilt wasn’t contested during the trial, the jury had to weigh whether they thought Ybarra knew at the time of the shootings that his actions were legally and morally wrong, or if he was legally insane.
Ybarra, who took the stand over two days during the trial, testified that he was compelled by the voices of God, Lucifer and Satan to carry out a campus shooting. He also claimed that he identified with Eric Harris, one of two student gunmen responsible for the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.
Prosecutors acknowledged during the trial that Ybarra is mentally ill, but insisted he was driven by hatred and anger, and understood that what he was doing was wrong. Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kristin Richardson said Ybarra never mentioned God, Satan or Lucifer directing him to kill until months after the shootings, after he’d heard other inmates talk of “God’s plan” through jail ministries.
Instead, Richardson said, Ybarra opened fire at the school “because he was angry at the world.”
According to testimony during the trial, Ybarra had scouted out the campus before the June 5, 2014, shootings. He killed Lee on a sidewalk outside Otto Miller Hall and wounded a second man, Thomas Fowler, who was struck by pellets that passed through Lee.
He then tried to shoot a female student, but his shotgun misfired and she ran away, according to testimony.
Ybarra then walked into Otto Miller Hall, and shot and critically wounded student Sarah Williams as she walked down a flight of stairs. Ybarra pointed the shotgun at a male student, but the gun misfired again and Ybarra was tackled by student-safety monitor Jon Meis.
During the trial, jurors visited the campus and Otto Miller Hall to gain a better understanding of how the shootings were carried out. Ybarra did not go on the campus visit.
The defense testimony focused on Ybarra’s developmental delays through childhood, his problems with substance abuse, and his treatment for mental illness — which included a failed attempt to have Ybarra involuntarily committed. By 2012, Ybarra was “experiencing homicidal fantasies related to shooting people in a school with depression, feelings of hatred and helplessness,” defense attorneys wrote in a trial brief.
Ybarra’s mother, Janice Ybarra, testified that her son suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and substance abuse.
“God had turned him over to Satan and Satan controlled him like a robot. … (He) felt compelled to do the school shootings as commanded so that he could die in accordance with the plans of the devil, Satan, and God,” the defense wrote in the brief.
