Double Murder-Suicide Chillingly Familiar Of 10 Grant County Murders This Year, Half Committed By Two Teenagers

For the second time in less than a year, a 14-year-old boy has taken up a rifle here and three people are dead. Residents are left to wonder why.

There have been 10 murders in this rural Washington county this year, and half were committed by two troubled junior high students.

The latest occurred on Friday, when 14-year-old Aaron Harmon shot his mother and younger stepsister to death and then turned his rifle on himself. No motive has been offered.

On Feb. 2 - another cold, snow-covered Friday in the Columbia Basin - 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis walked into his eighth-grade classroom and shot his teacher and two classmates to death, and wounded a third. Loukaitis has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, and his murder trial is set for early next year.

In a bizarre twist, Harmon is a cousin of Arnold Fritz, one of the students shot to death by Loukaitis. There is speculation that Harmon was deeply upset by his cousin’s death.

While Loukaitis has been described as a troubled loner angered by his parents’ marital problems and by the taunting of a classmate, there is little explanation for what motivated Harmon.

One neighbor, 16-year-old Codi Curtis, said she often rode the school bus with Harmon and that he gave no sign of problems on Thursday.

But Curtis noted that Harmon’s personality changed after his cousin was killed.

“Aaron became very distressed by his cousin’s death,” Curtis said. “If anyone mentioned his name, he’d start to cry.”

Curtis also said there was an argument at the Moore home on Thursday night, but declined further comment.

Neighbor Kim Harden said Harmon apparently had received no counseling after his cousin’s violent death.

“My daughter’s in a first period class with him,” Harden said. “He was a real quiet kid, he never caused any trouble.”

“We are under the feeling that he was trying to kill himself and his mother walked in on him,” Harden added.

The family of Arnold Fritz drove by the Moore house on Friday. “It’s a double shock. A tragedy,” mother Alice Fritz told the Tri-City Herald newspaper.

The Loukaitis killings shocked this community of 11,500, about 90 miles west of Spokane. Last February, many were willing to talk after those slayings. School officials discussed their plans to offer counseling to students. There were public memorial services.

But a second wrenching homicide inside of a year finds a community more jaded to the attention of outsiders.

School district officials, already facing lawsuits from victims in the Loukaitis case, declined to comment about Harmon.

Mental health providers, eager in February to discuss their plans for counseling students, said this time that it was inappropriate to comment.

A reporter who arrived at a basketball game Saturday morning at Chief Moses Junior High School, where Harmon attended classes, was asked by school officials to leave.

The Grant County Sheriff’s Department released only the barest information on Friday, and officers said nothing on Saturday, when an autopsy was performed on the victims.

Betty Hein, a volunteer on a mental health crisis hotline, said she had received no calls from anyone distraught over the latest killings. A former junior high school teacher, she recalled that 14 is a tough age.

“It’s a time when kids are undergoing a lot of physical changes and emotional ones,” Hein said. “Some don’t handle it too well.”

“I wish people would keep their guns in places where kids can’t have access to them,” Hein added.

Harmon left a suicide note, whose contents have not been released. Coroner Penny Sibley said only that it contained information about why he wanted to kill his mother, 43-year-old Linda Moore, and his stepsister, 9-year-old Mallory Moore. Stepfather Ronald Moore was at work at the time of the Friday morning killings.

Sibley said an autopsy showed that Mallory Moore and Harmon both died of rifle shot wounds to the head. She said the autopsy was not yet complete on Linda Moore.

Linda Moore’s body was spotted by an appliance repairman in the home’s entryway about 10 a.m. Friday, Sibley said. Mallory was found shot in the kitchen. Aaron was found in his bedroom, next to a small-caliber rifle he had apparently received as a Christmas present. There did not appear to be any sign of a struggle.

“With the injuries to him, we determined he was the perpetrator,” Sibley said.

The three were dressed and appeared about to leave the house when they died, she said.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Nicholas K. Geranios Associated Press