Seattle Police say 26-year-old Capitol Hill resident Michael LaRosa killed a man with an axe Monday morning at the corner of East Union and 15th Ave.
The 58-year-old victim’s name has not been released but a few in the CHS comments say they knew the 14th Ave resident as a “sweet peaceful old guy” with a dog he loved.
LaRosa has not yet been charged with the crime. He was booked into King County Jail Monday afternoon for investigation of homicide.
Just after 10:30 AM Monday, as a peculiarly heavy November snow fell on Seattle, several witnesses tell police they saw LaRosa strike a man in the head with an axe. The man died where he fell.
Police say LaRosa tried to escape into an alley between 14th and 15th from Union where he was surrounded by police and captured less than ten minutes later. The suspect description broadcast on police radio was of a heavy set man, 5’5″, 230 pounds, wearing a heavy jacket, dressed in black.
Police say LaRosa, who has a recent Summit Ave address, likely did not know his victim. He has a recent history of run-ins with the law including assault and domestic violence run-ins. The Seattle Times reports that a former girlfriend says LaRosa was attending counseling at East Olive Street’s Sound Mental Health.
In 2009, James Williams, who was receiving treatment and medication from Sound Mental Health prior to his crime, pleaded guilty to the stabbing murder of 31-year-old Shannon Harps on New Year’s Eve 2007. He was sentenced to 35 years in jail. A King County task force was formed following the Harps murder to examine breakdowns in the health and the justice systems that allowed Williams to be on the streets. We’ve already seen comments on CHS and other sites comparing this situation to the Harps murder. Before and after the 2007 murder, Sound Mental Health has treated thousands of patients on Capitol Hill. As we learn more about the alleged crime of LaRosa, expect the discussion of the treatment of mentally ill patients in the community to continue.
nobody deserves to be hacked up in the street like that.
I feel sorry for the dog too. Losing his master…
My heart goes out to the victim’s survivors.
As for where the “breakdowns in the health and the justice systems” that allowed these mentally ill men to murder… Do we really need a task force to figure out that Ronald Reagan’s defunding of the mental health infrastructure in the 80s laid the groundwork for this and the huge numbers of mentally ill homeless roaming the streets? Thanks I could help bros.
It’s amazing how many people don’t remember defunding of the mental health programs, what it used to be like before.
… 26 is typical of the age for the onset of schizophrenia. there may have been two victims yesterday.
…has failed our community and this mentally ill man. The courts and police had been told several times this man was dangerous and in serious need of complete psychiatric care, not jail. Jail is not where these people should be. Our system has turned too far away from the institutionalization of these mental patients causing them to roam the streets without supervision. We the people cannot expect them to properly take their medication because they are MENTALLY DISABLED. By no means am I making excuses for this heinous crime and the death of an innocent bystander. However, I know the axe wielding man personally and he needs a bed at Western State Mental Hospital, not a cot in prison where he will not receieve proper help. He also has a family back east who have discarded him like a dirty old shoe. I send my deepest sincere sympathy to the family of the victim.
> Ronald Reagan’s defunding of the mental health infrastructure in the 80s laid the groundwork for this and the huge numbers of mentally ill homeless roaming the streets?
I lived in DC when that happened. These were the years before they learned to fence off warm-air grates to deny the homeless the accommodation they afforded, so every warm-dry-air ventilation shaft from every subterranean government bunker was covered on winter nights with homeless men and women, and families.
Reagan was the incoherent avatar of a groundswell of gutless Boomer greed. Meanwhile, and still, neighbors who need help go without while those who need nothing demand more, more, more…
Is here a local facility where we can volunteer to serve the Thanksgiving meal
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2010/11/19/feed-the-hungry
too true. I was living near downtown Austin TX when Reagan & cronies closed the State Mental Hospital . . .I remember the disaster that insued in downtown as housands of paranoid schizophrenic individuals began roaming the streets
How many more people need to be killed on Capitol Hill by mentally unstable people?! This facility can not be in a residential area. One thing, if they manage the mentally ill, but they just let them walk unsupervised. With this scenario, mental health facilities can not be near residential areas!!! Family members, please sue the city and the county! They do not understand any other language. Injuries, deaths, they just don’t care. they care more about bicycling and other dysfunctional BS, rather then bringing civility to the streets. We don’t need more police, just get the mental health facilities out and away from general population. Get a clue!!!!!!…and what a shame of a town to expose people to this over and over. Telling people to walk and bicycle while mentally unstable people are roaming around. This place is sick.
I hope the Seattle Police Department gets hammered for this. Michael LaRosa’s ex-wife is one of my best friends. Mr. LaRosa had stalked my friend for months. She begged the SPD to do something; she explained that Mr. LaRosa was severely mentally ill. My friend’s father warned the police and court system that if Mr. LaRosa wasn’t taken off the streets, someone was going to be killed. The cops and courts didn’t listen. The last time my friend called the SPD, when LaRosa was shouting and banging on the window of her apartment, the SPD cop insulted her and told her she was being hysterical. He laughed off her fears. I hope this cop’s name ends up in the press.
The SPD has become the Pacific Northwest version of the LAPD. One of them shot that little old harmless man in the street a month or so ago, without reason. One of them beat the hell out of a young woman who was jaywalking. The SPD cops are not all bad — about three years ago a Seattle cop took good care of me when I needed the help. He was terrific. But that agency has a problem.
And I agree that this traces back to Reagan’s defunding of mental health services. This man had no business running around on the streets. It was documented that he was seriously ill. But public health systems and mental health services are always underfunded and understaffed, as a matter of policy. The state has to save money so it can make the bond payments on the stadiums Seattle built for some billionaires.
There is probably no one villian “at fault” for this breakdown in the system. Reporters writing about this will probably find a web of public mental health workers, and, in fairness, cops, who had too much on their plate. It’s a policy breakdown, flowing from a societal attitude that a social safety net for the poor, the sick and the crazy is somehow bad, and we shouldn’t pay taxes for it. This kind of violence flows from that societal attitude.
Really great to hear all you liberals blame Ronald Reagan for creating an axe murderer and essentially being responsible for an innocent mans death. You keep electing governers and senators that bankrupt your state and actually have control over your budget and allocating medical funding for your state…
talk about clueless…how was Palin’s book BTW? Good read? Idiot.
As I read this story I am reminded of the murder of Shannon Harps just a few blocks from my old apartment and how I refused to walk around at night for weeks until her murderer was caught. There have been too many of these mentally ill violent criminals to think that these things are truly random anymore. In addition to Shannon Harps and this latest murder there was also Teresa Butz, the September murders of 4 members of the Harm family by the matriarch who was schizophrenic and the 6 murders on I5 a few years ago by Isaac Zamora. From news accounts most of these people had a long history of mental illness and involvement in police altercations before they committed murder.
I can’t help but think that these murders and the other lower level crimes by mentally ill persons are a result of our society’s desire to push these people away and make them the problem of “the system”–the police, the courts, the community mental health centers and the families that are unlucky enough to have a mentally ill loved one.
As I watched the election returns a few weeks ago I wondered if the voters choosing more personal freedom and less taxes understood they were also making the choice to make themselves and their children more vulnerable to incidences like this murder. There will be less police, less prosecutors, less mental health services and less courts to address chronically mentally ill people who may be involved in lower level offenses before they murder. King County is one of the rare jurisdictions that has a Mental Health Court to supervise lower level offenders through specially trained mental health probation officers and order mentally ill offenders to attend mental health counseling and medication management. Its unlikely that this service to the community will survive the rounds of necessary budget cuts even though the need especially after an incident like this one is obvious. Even if it continues on some form it won’t be sufficient to truly address the problem.
Most citizens will continue to think that these crimes are too random to imagine that they or someone they love could be victims. Imagine if the school children who witnessed this crime had become victims themselves? Its clear that we as a society don’t care enough to truly create the change needed in the law, the funding of courts, police, and mental health services to truly treat and divert mentally ill persons from these violent crimes.
There will be more murders and violent crimes by mentally ill persons unless we as a society choose to pay the costs of treament before people offend–if not we’ll pay for treatment while the mentally ill offenders spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Hang on, this guy was getting free mental health care. He wasn’t a victim of any cuts.
I agree, they should reopen more state mental health hospitals and lock these folks up….oh wait, what will the ACLU say?
1. Learn to manage your money. Get out of debt. The high unemployment rate, (which is beginning to turn around BTW. Statistics show it takes about two years after a big financial crisis like the one that hit in 2008. Huh, how about that), and money problems we are all experiencing has NOTHING to do with an overburden of taxes, except for the rapidly disappearing middle-class & the poor, who pay disproportionately more taxes according to their income than the wealthy do. Taxes are a necessary part of paying for a civilized government, which in turn cares for its peoples needs. If you don’t like what your government is doing, vote to change it, instead of wasting time sneering at “liberals” & complaining about “taxes”
2. Get educated. Listening to Rush & Sarah & Glenn, who prey upon your fears & ignorance with half-truths & blatant lies while making a fat profit for themselves in the process, are feeding us misinformation. I have no problem with somebody making a buck, but these people are are not trying to help us by telling us the “truth”. They are searching for power & money and you are being gullible to the extreme.
3. Try to find some motivation for living other than accumulating wealth (which will all be taken away from you when you die) & guarding it against some “other” or blaming something simplistic (taxes!) when there seems to not be enough. Search within your mind for a crumb of compassion for the needs and/or sufferings of others. And turn off that talk radio. It doesn’t help.