The Skagit Valley Herald is aware that many people in this community knew or know the victims of Tuesday’s shooting and stabbing rampage that killed six people and injured four others.

We feel it is important for members of the community to share their experiences with the victims and their feelings about the events of the past few days.

If you were touched in some way by this tragedy or want to share memories about the victims or offer condolences, please feel free to post your comments here.

As always, please be respectful of each other, and use this space as a place to reach out to the community at a tragic time.

Why were the other comments deleted?

Manerva - 11 September 2008 07:24 PM

Why were the other comments deleted?

Yeah...no kidding - why were they?

Due to an administrative error the original thread was permanently deleted. Unfortunately a roll-back to a previous backup was not an option since it would mean the loss of many already posted stories and their attached comments.

We have taken measures to ensure that it won’t happen again and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused.

OKAY THEN....at the risk of sounding like an idiot....I’m so sorry AGAIN.

The coverage of this story has centered around the fallen Deputy with a name,(Anne Jackson) a Human Being that was on our Planet Earth. For some reason the Skagit Valley Herald seems to have minimize the lives of the five nameless Human Beings that are no longer on our Planet Earth.

("Skagit County Sheriff’s Deputy Anne Jackson.”

“Isaac L. Zamora, 28, has been charged with Jackson’s death and five others in a violent spree that began in Alger and continued south on Interstate 5.”

“Ralph Schwartz | Skagit Valley Herald
September 09, 2008 - 07:00 AM”

“Staff writer Kate Martin contributed to this report.")

The identity and recognition of the five nameless people are just as important as the Deputy that is continually named. As if she was more important than the lives of the nameless victims in this crime. If this is about contributions to our society; all men and women are created equal. Then let the record show the names and contributions of the nameless fallen victims as well as the named Deputy.

BeyondWorldView

I agree while it is tragic that a deputy was lost it was equally tragic that the others were lost as well.

BeyondWorldView - 20 September 2008 07:33 PM

The coverage of this story has centered around the fallen Deputy with a name,(Anne Jackson) a Human Being that was on our Planet Earth. For some reason the Skagit Valley Herald seems to have minimize the lives of the five nameless Human Beings that are no longer on our Planet Earth.

("Skagit County Sheriff’s Deputy Anne Jackson.”

“Isaac L. Zamora, 28, has been charged with Jackson’s death and five others in a violent spree that began in Alger and continued south on Interstate 5.”

“Ralph Schwartz | Skagit Valley Herald
September 09, 2008 - 07:00 AM”

“Staff writer Kate Martin contributed to this report.")

The identity and recognition of the five nameless people are just as important as the Deputy that is continually named. As if she was more important than the lives of the nameless victims in this crime. If this is about contributions to our society; all men and women are created equal. Then let the record show the names and contributions of the nameless fallen victims as well as the named Deputy.

BeyondWorldView

You must have missed all of the stories in the SVH about the other victims, I guess..

I think that we need to stop worrying about who had the most coverage in the news regarding the shooting tragedy and think about what the families of all the victims are going to have to go through and the effect it has had on our sleepy little valley.
We will no longer look at things around is as we did before.
We will now notice the cars a little more that are going by us on the freeways. We will think about the safety of your friends and families as they work and the children’s safety as they attend school. Our Valley has been changed, forever and we now need to work on helping each other in the days ahead. We can never go back to the way we were. Our security has been shattered and all within a matter of minutes. We once watched the news and heard the same type of stories but they were always in other cities, far removed from us. We would think to ourselves, this could never happen here. It has now happened and we need to be united instead of divided over trivial issues.

sdalouden - 20 September 2008 10:12 PM

I think that we need to stop worrying about who had the most coverage in the news regarding the shooting tragedy and think about what the families of all the victims are going to have to go through and the effect it has had on our sleepy little valley.
We will no longer look at things around is as we did before.
We will now notice the cars a little more that are going by us on the freeways. We will think about the safety of your friends and families as they work and the children’s safety as they attend school. Our Valley has been changed, forever and we now need to work on helping each other in the days ahead. We can never go back to the way we were. Our security has been shattered and all within a matter of minutes. We once watched the news and heard the same type of stories but they were always in other cities, far removed from us. We would think to ourselves, this could never happen here. It has now happened and we need to be united instead of divided over trivial issues.

I think I would agree with you if the victims were killed through an intentional criminal act such as a spree killing (Charlie Starkweather, Andrew Cunanan) or a serial killer (Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway) or gang violence (Bloods and Crips/LA-style).  That the killings were committed by someone who is mentally ill makes the entire episode horrible, but, IMO, not on the same level as the above.  While we’ve never had an incident on the same level of the Alger incident previously, there have been several acts of violence due to mental illness in Skagit County over the years.  In fact, off the top of my head I can think of three such tragedies in the last 35 years.

When random drive-by’s and serial killings and violence due to robbery and home-invasions and cold-blooded murders become the norm just as they are in large metropolitan areas then I will start to feel less isolated and safe.  Until then, I personally don’t see that we have been negatively changed so much as we have been awakened.

We still don’t know how sick Zamora is.

Manerva - 22 September 2008 12:38 PM

We still don’t know how sick Zamora is.

You don’t think that what he did is any indication of exactly how sick?  There are details of the incident that have not been released publically, BTW.  When those details come out at trial, everybody will see exactly *how* sick this young man is, believe me.

LivinUpriver - 22 September 2008 09:09 PM

Manerva - 22 September 2008 12:38 PM

We still don’t know how sick Zamora is.

You don’t think that what he did is any indication of exactly how sick?  There are details of the incident that have not been released publically, BTW.  When those details come out at trial, everybody will see exactly *how* sick this young man is, believe me.

I think I know the details that you’re speaking of and it’s those details that have made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to have any sympathy for him (call me callous..so be it)...and I think we will never TRULY know if he was a sociopath who acted out his rage or if he’s honestly a mentally ill person who somehow managed to drive himself to the police department and turn himself in.

Manerva - 23 September 2008 04:28 PM

I think I know the details that you’re speaking of and it’s those details that have made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to have any sympathy for him (call me callous..so be it)...and I think we will never TRULY know if he was a sociopath who acted out his rage or if he’s honestly a mentally ill person who somehow managed to drive himself to the police department and turn himself in.

From what I have read about him and seen of him on the news, I don’t see him as a sociopath at all.  Rather, someone with serious mental health issues that *could* have been treated by medication and therapy.  A textbook sociopath doesn’t behave the way he did.  Sociopaths generally operate in a secretive, clandestine manner - his actions were certainly not of that variety.

I’m not a mental health professional, and am certainly not trying to diagnose him, but from what we know and what he has exhibited and stated since (and before) the crime, he appears to be schizophrenic.