SEATTLE — The trial of a Mountlake Terrace man accused in a deadly 2014 shooting at Seattle Pacific University got underway Monday.
In opening statements, attorneys debated Aaron Ybarra’s mental state at the time of the incident.
Jurors on Monday also heard from students who were present when the attacker opened fire with a shotgun.
Ybarra, 29, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to first-degree murder and other charges in connection to the shooting that killed 19-year-old Paul Lee and wounded two others.
Charging papers say Ybarra scouted the campus before he returned on June 5, 2014, with the intent of committing a mass shooting he did not expect to survive.
After the attack, he reportedly told police that he’d stopped taking his medication for mental health issues because he “wanted to feel his hate,” according to court papers.
Ybarra allegedly was carrying 50 rounds for the shotgun at the time of the attack. He reportedly kept a journal during the weeks before, and his final entry was: “I just want people to die and I’m gonna die with them!”
The attack was thwarted when a student pepper sprayed and then disarmed the gunman.
Ybarra reportedly told detectives that he was inspired by the killers at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 and the man who shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007. All three shooters died during their attacks.
“He stated that he just had a hatred for the world in general,” prosecutors wrote in charging papers.
Mountlake Terrace police had encountered Ybarra at least three times in the years before the attacks. In 2010 and 2012, police took him to a hospital, recommending that he be involuntarily committed because of suicidal behavior. In 2013, officers were summoned to his house because another family member allegedly was suicidal.
During the 2012 encounter, police reportedly found Ybarra intoxicated and lying in the middle of the street where he lived. A passerby had called 911.
Ybarra told officers he wanted the “SWAT team to get him and make him famous,” according to police reports.
The King County Superior Court murder trial is expected to last up to two months.
Police have released surveillance video showing a man they say is Ybarra opening fire on the Seattle campus.
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