11-year-old finds body of slain mom

Associated Press

SEATTLE — An 11-year-old girl returned home from a piano lesson to find that her mother had been slain, police and neighbors said.

Donna O’Steen, 53, an active school volunteer and avid sailboat racer who lived in the Sunset Hills area, was found dead after she failed to pick up her fifth-grade daughter from a piano lesson before school Thursday morning and the teacher brought the child home.

Police would not say officially where in the house O’Steen’s body was found or how she died. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office said Friday an autopsy showed she died of homicidal violence, but the office offered no details. Initial police radio reports indicated she had been stabbed. Neighbors said they were told by police officers that she was stabbed and the house ransacked.

Police served a search warrant Thursday night at a home downhill from O’Steen’s home and questioned a man who lives there.

Nearby residents said crime is rare in the neighborhood of well-kept homes, many overlooking Puget Sound.

"It happens in the best of neighborhoods, and this is the best neighborhood you can find," said Victor Manarolla, 84. "I’ve been here 50 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this."

O’Steen, who also had a 14-year-old son, and her husband, Rich Haynie, ran an insurance agency. She was one of the first women in the area to race sailboats and once sailed to the South Pacific with her former husband, Jim O’Steen, in their 37-foot boat, the Renaissance.

O’Steen also was a frequent volunteer at Adams Elementary School, especially in the visual arts programs, principal Sara Liberty-Laylin said.

"We’re all really shaken," Liberty-Laylin said. "I reacted like many of the teachers. We all felt really sick to our stomachs."