Yellow Pages
The mother of the man suspected of killing six people—including a Skagit County Sheriff’s deputy— Tuesday in a shooting rampage in the Alger area said she has long tried to get her son help for what she described as “severe mental illness.”
Dennise Zamora told the Skagit Valley Herald that her son, 28-year-old Isaac Zamora, had been living in the woods before he shot and killed the deputy and four others in his Alger neighborhood and then shot and killed a motorist on Interstate 5.
“The officer I called to help ... is the one who is dead,” said Zamora in a phone interview. “We’re just devastated. We’re devastated by everyone’s loss.”
Zamora said that she and her husband have spent years trying to get their son help, but state laws prevented the couple from committing him to a hospital or other facility where he could get treatment because authorities had not determined that he was a threat to himself or others.
“We’ve got to change the laws,” Zamora said. “While we’re protecting (mentally ill) people’s civil rights, these guys, like my son, are living like animals.”
“We extend our deepest condolences to everyone who was hurt or killed,” she said.
