Seattle Jewish Shooting Trial Under Way

Discussion in 'Politics & Religion' started by browntwn, Apr 14, 2008.

  1. #1
    SEATTLE -- The man accused of shooting up the Seattle Jewish Federation two years ago, killing one woman and wounding five, was not insane but had a deliberate plan to make a blood-soaked political point, prosecutors said Monday as his trial opened.

    Naveed Haq, 32, of Tri-Cities, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of murder and attempted murder in the July 2006 attack. If convicted, he faces life in prison without parole.

    Prosecutor Erin Ehlert said Haq stalked through the office, shooting one victim after another, in one case reaching over a cubicle wall before pulling the trigger. She said he chased Pamela Waechter toward an exit, fatally shooting her as she ran down the stairs.

    Ehlert told jurors Monday that Haq carefully planned his attack, making four separate trips to gun shops and using the Internet to map the 227-mile trip from his parents' home in Pasco, Wash., to the Jewish Federation in Seattle.

    "He thought about what he did. He planned what he did," she said.

    John Carpenter, Haq's defense lawyer, called the shooting "the acts of a madman" and said they came "not from a darkened heart, but from a diseased man."

    Carpenter said the defense would present volumes of mental health files, showing Haq's bipolar schizophrenic and psychotic tendencies, including grandiose thoughts, hearing voices from walls and paranoid delusions.

    Prosecutors plan to show surveillance video of Haq forcing a 14-year-old girl at gunpoint to help him get into the building; the teen's aunt, a worker at the building, was among those injured.

    Ehlert said Haq was on a mission to make a political statement: "That the Jewish people in America have too much power."

    Ehlert played a recording of a 911 call in which Haq, a U.S.-born Muslim, asked to be connected to CNN and said he was making a point about U.S. support for Israel and the war in Iraq.

    "I don't care if I die," Haq told the operator. "This is just to make a point."

    Soon afterward, though, he concluded that his point had been made. "I'll give myself up," he said.

    Carpenter blamed some of Haq's troubles, including suicidal thoughts, on a psychiatrist's decision to take him off the mood stabilizing drug lithium because of hand tremors. The other drugs didn't work as well and triggered homicidal impulses and uncontrollable anger, including road rage incidents and a bar fight, he said.

    Carpenter also said that in the months leading up to the shooting Haq repeatedly sought help controlling his anger and even called a crisis hotline requesting a one-week inpatient placement at a treatment facility that never happened.

    Another indication of Haq's insanity, Carpenter said, was that he believed God had sanctioned his actions because he had an easy drive to Seattle, was only stopped briefly by a traffic patrol officer and because he shot so accurately despite a lack of firearms training. source
     
    browntwn, Apr 14, 2008 IP