ALGER — This typically peaceful community is in shock after a violent spree on Tuesday left six people dead and four injured.

Five who were killed and two of the injured were attacked in a secluded subdivision near the Whatcom County line. Police believe the assailant was a neighborhood resident.

Isaac L. Zamora, 28, was arrested in downtown Mount Vernon after a high-speed chase that began in Alger. For now, Zamora is being held on investigation of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder in lieu of $5 million bail.

Many of his former neighbors on Silver Creek Drive didn’t know Zamora well, but the word up and down the gravel road was that he was mentally ill.

“I don’t know what to think about it, really,” said Clinton Griffeth, contacted by phone Wednesday at his home on Silver Creek Drive. “He wasn’t right in the head. It wasn’t surprising, but not something you expect to happen.”

Daniel Reiss, 20, another Silver Creek resident, barely knows Zamora.

“I could kind of tell when I talked to him he wasn’t all there,” Reiss said. Still, he added, “I never saw anything like this coming from this guy.”

Reiss and his uncle were at home on the 19400 block of Silver Creek Drive when the attacks occurred. Reiss said his uncle heard gunshots, but the two weren’t alarmed.

“We hear gunshots all the time. We didn’t think much of it,” Reiss said.

The neighborhood is dense with trees and cuts through a valley so that even in the summer, residents say, the sun sets at 3 p.m. The excitement in the community earlier this summer was the frequent visits by a 300-pound black bear with a fondness for bird feeders. The bear was eventually captured and relocated to the North Cascades wilderness.

Now, the community that cherishes its privacy is physically cut off from the rest of the world as dozens of investigators pore over seven houses, all regarded as crime scenes.

By Wednesday morning, investigators were preventing all outside traffic — especially the phalanx of television and newspaper media — from entering Silver Creek Drive and its side streets. While those residents whose homes weren’t crime scenes were free to come and go, others were told to stay away from their homes until Thursday afternoon at the earliest.

Griffeth said police were providing some information to residents that was not being released to the media. When told that the Skagit Valley Herald had unverified reports that a woman who lived in the neighborhood was slain and her husband was injured, Griffeth said he had heard the same information.

“They were good people,” he said of the couple. “It’s extremely unfortunate that they got involved in this.”

Griffeth said he had no more information about the victims in his neighborhood.

“Police are passing out bits and pieces, but they don’t have an official story. They’re trying to put together a timeline,” Griffeth said.

Marje Faubion was in her home on the 19300 block of Silver Creek Drive during the attacks, but she had no idea at the time that anything unusual was happening on her street.

“The first thing I heard about it is when I saw it on the news. I about dropped my teeth,” Faubion said.

On Wednesday afternoon, when the investigation was in full swing, Faubion remained in the dark about who had been affected.

“I pretty much know everybody, and I still don’t know who didn’t make it,” she said.

Many in Alger, from Fire Chief Dan Costanti to Gloria Kellar, the regular daytime bartender at the Alger Bar and Grille, knew only what they gleaned from newspaper and television reports.

On Wednesday, noontime patrons at the Bar and Grille grabbed newspapers as they walked in the door and craned their necks to watch the news on the eatery’s big-screen television.

Kellar expressed sympathy for Zamora’s mother, Dennise Zamora.

“I feel so bad for Dennise. I feel so bad for her,” Kellar said, her voice wavering as she stood behind the bar. “To have your son do something like that—”

Joyce Clower of Alger, a clerk at the Shell station at the Alger interchange on I-5, knew Isaac Zamora well as a customer. He routinely vandalized the fueling area, dumping motor oil and throwing paper towels, Clower said. He also verbally abused the employees.

Just a few nights before the shootings, Clower said Zamora hid in the bushes and startled some employees who were outside taking a break.

Isaac Zamora had been banned from the property months ago, Clower said, but her boss took sympathy on him because of his reputed mental illness and allowed him in.

Clower said she thought Zamora was dangerous.

“That’s why I called and had a no-trespassing (placed) on him,” she said.

“The cops told me that night, ‘You can’t trust him.’”

Bridle Drive resident Al McGillis marveled at the fact that it could have been him who was attacked.

“I’ve thought about that all day long,” McGillis said as he watched the body of slain Skagit County Sheriff’s Deputy Anne Jackson being ushered away in a hearse. The tragedy reminded him of his cousin’s slaying in Mount Vernon five years ago.

“You think it’s never going to happen to you, and you pray it’s never going to happen to you,” he said.

“You never know.”

• Ralph Schwartz can be reached at 360-416-2138 or .

<b>Community memorial events

• Bethel Assembly of God Church, 805 Township St., Sedro-Woolley, will open its sanctuary Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. for prayer and reflection. Pastors are available by appointment. Call 856-0871.

• The Alger Community Church, 1475 Silver Run Lane off Old Highway 99, will hold a candlelight vigil Friday at 8 p.m. The church is one-half mile north of Alger-Cain Lake Road.