Mother of accused testifies at Jewish Center shooting trial

Published 5:00 am Thursday, May 1, 2008

SEATTLE — Mental problems that emerged when Naveed Afzal Haq was in college were to blame for his rampage that left one woman dead and five injured at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, his mother has testified.

Weeping on the witness stand Wednesday in King County Superior Court, Nahida Haq, 54, of Pasco, described how her son went from being an honor student to an agitated young man who heard voices, thought everyone was eavesdropping on him and was fired from every job he had in the years before the shooting on July 18, 2006.

Her son, 32, has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity to aggravated first-degree murder in the shooting of Pamela Waechter, five counts of attempted first-degree murder, malicious harassment and other charges. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty, so if he is convicted of aggravated murder he faces a mandatory life prison term without parole.

Prosecutors say he carefully planned the rampage to make a statement against Jews, Israel and U.S. foreign policy.

As the first of his relatives to testify, Nahida Haq said his life began falling apart after he left the immigrant Pakistani family’s home in the Tri-Cities for college on the East Coast.

After his second year of college, she said, he slept constantly on visits home, shaved his head, paced and became convinced that people were listening to his every word. He worked at a retail store, gas station, UPS, Lowe’s and — for four hours — as a telemarketer, but “was fired from each and every one,” she testified.

“He always thought somebody was controlling his mind, telling him to do things he doesn’t want to do,” she said.

After earning a degree in engineering at Washington State University, he had two job interviews in that field but said they left him feeling humiliated, she added.

She told the jury he had a gun he used only once, for target practice, but she took it away long before the attack in Seattle and refused to return it when he asked.