MONROE — When a woman went to check on her neighbor Sunday in the Woods Creek area near Monroe, she was reportedly shot at.
Around noon, she told Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies, she heard an alarm sounding from a nearby house and went outside to see what was going on.
She saw her neighbor on the other side of some trees, acting strangely and moving in a “zig-zag,” according to a deputy’s report. The woman asked if her neighbor was OK.
Before she could complete the sentence, the neighbor, a 64-year-old woman, raised her hand and appeared to be holding a gun, court papers say.
Then, gunfire could be heard.
The other woman, who believed the bullets were meant for her, ran back to her house to call 911. She heard two more gunshots when she was inside, court papers say.
Deputies soon arrived to the suspect’s house and made several orders over loudspeaker for her to come outside. There was no response.
A deputy found her kneeling on the opposite side of the house, as if she were gardening. She acted confused when she saw law enforcement was at her house.
She claimed that she had ear protection on and couldn’t hear the loudspeaker commands, court papers say. A deputy noted that she seemed to have no problem tracking their conversation, though, despite still wearing the ear protection.
The woman reportedly said she didn’t have any guns. But her son, who had been sleeping inside, said otherwise. She had a revolver, he told deputies. He also said that he was briefly awakened by gunshots, but fell back to sleep.
The suspect then apparently changed her story, and said she did have a gun. It was in her bedroom. According to the deputy’s report, she said she was shooting the gun to scare her neighbors, who “have radio frequency devices that impose on her privacy.”
A deputy wrote that the woman “displayed an unhealthy amount of paranoia that ultimately led to endangering someone’s life.”
She also appeared distracted and forgetful as she led the deputies around her house, looking for the key to her gun safe.
Eventually, they found the key underneath a drawer inside a dresser. The deputies retrieved a loaded revolver from the safe, according to court papers.
The woman was booked into the Snohomish County Jail for investigation of first-degree assault. She was released Tuesday after posting $10,000 bond.
Zachariah Bryan: 425-339-3431; zbryan@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @zachariahtb.
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