NO HEADLINE

The mother of homicide suspect Travis Robert Ault, 17, said Sunday she is sorry for the violence that left a woman and her son dead Friday night.

Friends and co-workers, meanwhile, grieved the loss of Doreen Britt, 52, and Wesley G. Myers, 18, killed at their South Side home. Britt’s husband, Gary Frost, suffered a broken jaw and arm, police said.

Britt was a popular educator and counselor. She had six children, friends said. Myers had been working with his father to learn carpentry and was seeking to finish his high school education. He was also newly devoted to body building.

Ault, captured by police Saturday after a 22-hour manhunt, was being held Sunday in Spokane County Juvenile Detention Center on two counts of first degree murder.

“I can hardly believe this has happened,” said Ault’s mother, Laurie Crow. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s a shock to all of us. As a mother, there’s a real grief,” she said in an interview at her South Side home.

Crow and her husband, Jerry Crow, said Ault and Myers were friends. Myers in recent weeks had even asked to stay at their home at 38th Avenue and Regal Street.

Ault, who has a juvenile record in Spokane, Snohomish and King counties, had started acting unusual about three days before the killings, the Crows said.

The Crows said they believe that marijuana Ault was using may have been laced with a more potent drug. “It sounds like there were some bad drugs,” Laurie Crow said. “I don’t know.”

Jerry Crow said, “I think there was something in the weed they smoked.”

Police said Ault went to visit Myers at his home, but the motive for the killings was not clear. The two were known to smoke marijuana together, police said. Britt was found in the living room, and Myers was dead upstairs. At least one of them was shot, police said.

Frost escaped the home after being beaten and called police about 8:30 p.m. on Friday.

Ault returned to the Crow residence. The Crows persuaded him to surrender, but Ault escaped from their car in the downtown area as they drove to the Public Safety Building on West Mallon Avenue.

“He was emotional and he was really out of it,” Jerry Crow said.

Laurie Crow said, “He was just upset, incoherent … You could hardly understand him.”

She said police asked her not to talk about statements that Ault made after the homicides. The Crows said they did not have any guns in their home.

“It’s all speculation,” she said. “As far as what’s fact, I don’t know.”

Ault was captured after the mother of another friend called police Saturday and told them she was on her way to an apartment complex at Richard Allen Court in southeast Spokane.

A woman who identified herself as the caller told KREM-TV on Sunday she agreed to take Ault to get a car, but stopped at a convenience store on the way and called police, who arrested them when they arrived at the apartment complex. She was later released.

Parker Bailey, a childhood friend of Myers’, said Myers had stopped his juvenile involvement with gangs and was working to finish his high school education. Bailey said that Myers owned a rifle that he may have kept in his bedroom at the Britt home. Myers smoked pot, Bailey said, “but that was it.” Bailey also said that Myers’ father, who lives in Spokane, was teaching Myers to become a carpenter.

“He was great guy,” Bailey said of Myers. “He’d always helped the little people.”

Bailey said Myers stopped kids from bullying him when they were in school years ago.

“His mom was one of the best moms out there,” Bailey said of Britt. “She was always there to help you.”

Bailey said that Frost, who had worked as a counselor at Deaconess Medical Center but was laid off about a year ago, was “extremely cool.”

“This is hurting me so bad,” he said.

Britt worked as a program coordinator in the Center for Prevention at Educational Service District 101 in Spokane, said district Superintendent Terry Munther.

“Doreen dedicated her life to kids,” Munther said, describing her as one of the most popular and valuable members of his 175-person staff. He said she was outgoing and funny and worked hard.

She provided substance abuse and other prevention programs to some 59 public school districts and 45 approved private schools that use the services of ESD 101.

Munther said he is arranging to have grief counselors available to help his staff cope with the loss.

Britt was also a member of an ESD crisis team that would respond to schools after life-altering events such as a fatal car accident or other death.

Ault’s juvenile record included felonies, but the Crows said their son did not have a history of violence. They said he was charged with stealing a bike from a child when he was about 15, and was also charged with a vehicle theft and a theft at a store. Ault’s biological father is deceased, and Jerry Crow said he considers himself as Ault’s father.

The Crows became homeless about three years ago while living in Seattle and Ault went into foster care, they said. He ran away and got in trouble. Court records show he used two aliases, James K. Crow and Travis Linquist.

About 18 months ago, he moved to Spokane to help care for Laurie Crow’s mother and Ault’s grandmother, who died last August. The Crows said that Ault’s probation officer and caseworker, both in the Seattle area, knew he was in Spokane.

Since the grandmother’s death, the Crows and a daughter had been living there with Ault, who kept a pit bull there.

They described their son as loving, the kind of boy who still kissed his mother in front of friends.

“He’s not violent,” Laurie Crow said.

Jerry Crow said about the homicides, “That’s not the Travis we knew.”