By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
Many jurors and spectators in a Seattle courtroom Monday were moved to tears as they listened to the quivering voice of 14-year-old Kelsey Burkum, niece of shooting victim Cheryl Stumbo, tell 911 operators and police how, in July 2006, Naveed Haq pulled a gun on her and forced his way into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.
The high school sophomore, now 16, was again soft-spoken while on the witness stand. Wearing pearls and a flower-print summer skirt, with her blonde hair pulled back in a bun, her hands rested politely in her lap.
Once inside the building, she told the court, Haq turned his attention to the receptionist, and asked to see the manager. As Burkum ducked into the women’s bathroom to hide, the teen recalled hearing “shots and screaming” and someone yelling, “call 911!”
Minutes later, after several other calls had gone in to emergency personnel from other victims cornered by Haq in their offices, or in the Federation’s hallway, during the shooting spree, the 30-year-old Muslim-American man was in custody.
One woman, Pamela Waechter, 58, was killed and five others were seriously wounded, including Stumbo, Burkum’s aunt.
Officers who rescued the young girl brought her to a hospital to be checked out, but she was not injured.
During their opening statements, defense lawyers argued that Haq, a diagnosed schizophrenic who also has bi-polar disorder and a 10-year history of mental problems, was angry, agitated, and “unable to appreciate the nature of his acts that day.”
Detailing Haq’s medical records by showing the treatment that Haq had received for mental health problems during the six months leading up to the shootings, defense attorney John Carpenter told the court that Haq was at the time becoming increasingly angry, and had seen a doctor 12 times to discuss his growing rage.
The physician’s notes documented Haq’s consistent and recurring therapeutic goal: “To be less angry,” Carpenter said.
Haq’s defense will focus on the drug Effexor, an anti-psychotic medication prescribed to Haq when he was taken off of lithium, a more conventional treatment considered to be the “gold standard,” added Carpenter.
Carpenter also told the court that the Food and Drug Administration includes a caution on the Effexor warning label, stating that it has been shown to produce homicidal effects in 2 to 5 percent of the population that uses it. He inferred that Haq was a part of that minority.
Prosecutors painted another picture of the defendant, however. They say Haq was deliberate, calm, controlled and calculating that day.
According to Erin Ehlert, one of King County’s senior deputy prosecuting attorneys, Haq had the presence of mind to give an officer who cited him for a routine traffic violation right before the shooting his name and updated address information on the back of his driver’s license, without triggering any suspicion.
Burkum, who took the stand late Monday morning, testified that Haq had calmly instructed her to be “careful” as she waited to be admitted to the building by the Federation’s receptionist. Ehlert told the courtroom that Haq had stood out of the way of security cameras while they waited.
Following her niece, Stumbo, the director of marketing and communications for the Federation, testified that Haq had “seemed angry, but his tone didn’t show it. He was not shouting, not screaming…he was pointing the gun at me.”
Two more Federation employees who were shot — Layla Bush, the receptionist, and Carol Goldman, a coordinator for the community campaign — took the stand Wednesday and gave their accounts of the shooting. Bush, 24, who must now walk with a cane and sustained two bullet wounds, testified that she had been unable to move off of the floor to perform what she saw as her primary task at the moment: to call 911. Goldman, during her testimony, moved her chair to the middle of the courtroom to demonstrate to the jury the angle from which Haq shot her in the leg.
Several supporters and employees of the Federation have sat in the small courtroom since the trial began. Several became tearful during Monday’s opening statements, when prosecutor Ehlert make her most dramatic point: she recreated the image of Haq, extending his arm over the stairwell railing, taking aim, and shooting Pamela Waechter for the second time as she tried to flee, inflicting a fatal wound to her brain through her left ear.
Once in custody, added Ehlert, “the defendant followed every single direction.”
The evidence seized by detectives from Haq’s apartment in Pasco, in Eastern Washington, showed that he had planned the crimes during the 12-day period leading up to July 28. Haq allegedly conducted a Google search of Jewish sites in Seattle that yielded the Federation’s address and he also retrieved directions to the building.
“He thought out what he did,” Ehlert said. “He planned what he did. He acted intentionally.”
Other documents in Haq’s home showed that he bought two guns during that time, filling out the necessary paperwork for one and making a $100 deposit on another, according to charging papers.
Federal law prohibits people with serious mental health histories from buying guns. However, Washington law allows individuals who are detained for certain short-term mental health evaluations and commitments to buy firearms.
In addition to the guns, Haq bought “hollow-point ammunition” that explodes in the front when it comes in contact with an object, said Ehlert.
Ilana Kennedy, the director of education for the Washington State Holocaust Resource Center, a Jewish organization located directly under the Federation’s offices, testified that she heard screams and loud thuds above her that sounded like furniture being moved. She soon realized it was the sound of people hitting the floor.
“I heard probably nine shots and the screaming continued the entire time,” said Kennedy, who added that she could still hear screaming from the building after she made her way out of the building and into the street.
The last witness of the day was Officer Poblocki, one of a group of Seattle police officers taking their coffee break that day at a Starbuck’s located a block from the Federation.
Poblocki said a rush of people who were running and walking, and some who were bleeding, suddenly came into the store yelling, “He’s shooting. He’s shooting.”
“I took up a position near the alley,” said Poblocki, who provided police cover at the side door of the alley exit for the Federation offices
Scheduled to testify Tuesday were a medical expert for the state, a CSI detective who was on the case, and the traffic officer who stopped Haq immediately before the incident.
King County Superior Court Judge Paris Kallas, in response to a motion from Haq’s attorneys, has not yet ruled as to whether she will admit certain possibly “incriminating” statements made by the state’s expert medical witnesses about Haq’s mental condition.