SEATTLE (Reuters) - A man charged with
opening fire with a shotgun at a small Christian college in Seattle,
killing a student, intends to plead not guilty by reason of insanity,
his lawyer said at a court appearance by the suspect on Monday.
Attorneys for the defendant, Aaron Ybarra, 26, have said their
client suffers from "significant and long-standing mental health
issues" that were a factor in the shooting this month at Seattle
Pacific University.
The defense also has previously disclosed that Ybarra, who was not a
student at the university, was involuntarily committed to a
psychiatric institution in the past.
Ybarra, shackled and dressed in white jail scrubs labeled "ultra
security inmate," stood silently with a blank stare during the brief
King County court proceedings. He was ordered to remain held without
bail.
Ybarra was initially charged with one-count of first-degree murder,
two counts of first-degree attempted murder and a single count of
assault in the June 5 shooting in which one student was killed and
several others were injured at the Methodist liberal arts college.
Prosecutors on Monday filed an additional attempted murder charge
accusing Ybarra of pointing his weapon at yet another victim in a
failed attempt to shoot that person.
Prosecutors said they would seek a life prison sentence for Ybarra
if he were convicted.
Ybarra is accused of opening fire with a double-barreled shotgun on
a group of people outside an academic building on campus, killing
student Paul Lee with a blast to the back of his head and wounding a
second man who was struck with pellets.
Reloading his weapon after the lower-barrel of the gun
malfunctioned, Ybarra then entered the building, where he shot and
wounded a female student who was coming down the stairs, according
to prosecutors.
When the suspect paused to reload again, authorities say, a student
safety monitor charged out of his office to douse the gunman with
pepper spray, grabbed the weapon away, then tackled Ybarra as
several bystanders jumped in to help. Authorities say the gunman
also was carrying about 50 rounds of ammunition and a large hunting
knife.
In court documents, prosecutors say Ybarra confessed to police
detectives that he had been planning a mass shooting in which he
wanted to kill as many people as possible before committing suicide.
They said entries in a journal he kept expressed admiration for the
massacres committed at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 and
Virginia Tech in 2007.
The rampage came about two weeks after seven people died in a spasm
of violence near the University of California at Santa Barbara and a
week before a teenage gunman shot a classmate to death and killed
himself at a high school near Portland, Oregon.
(Reporting by Jimmy Lovaas in Seattle; Writing by Steve Gorman;
Editing by Jim Loney and Will Dunham)
