Shooting details emerge in Seattle

SEATTLE – The young man who gunned down six people – including two teenage girls – at a house party over the weekend had brought three guns, more than 300 rounds of ammunition, a baseball bat and a black machete, and told guests as he blazed away, “There’s plenty for everyone,” authorities said Monday.

Aaron Kyle Huff, 28, was “clearly intent on doing homicidal mayhem” when he opened fire on the party of about 20 people who were winding down after a nearby Seattle rave, Deputy Police Chief Clark Kimerer said.

However, investigators still have no idea why, he said.

“We may be asking these questions over the next year or two,” Kimerer said. “Hopefully we will find some answers.”

The King County medical examiner’s office released names and ages of the dead on Monday. They are Melissa Lynn Moore, 14; Suzanne Thorne, 15; Christopher Williamson, 21; Justin Schwartz, 22; Jason Travers, 32; and Jeremy Robert Martin, 26, as well as Huff, who killed himself.

Although the manager of his apartment building described Huff and his twin brother as “twin teddy bears,” people who knew him described a quiet loner prone to anger.

But at the Saturday morning party no altercation took place, no arguments that might have set Huff off, Kimerer said. Huff was at the party after attending a zombie-themed rave in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, where he met many of the victims, police said. In the early hours of Saturday morning, he hung out with about 25 to 30 young people.

But for some reason, Huff quietly left the house party just before 7 a.m., walked back to his black Dodge pickup and retrieved part of his arsenal.

“He came heavily armed with additional ammunition … clearly intent upon doing homicidal mayhem in a killing spree,” Kimerer said. “He had designs to do great damage to innocent people.”

At his pickup, Huff got a .40-caliber handgun, a pistol-grip shotgun, and two bandoliers of ammunition. Using a can of spray paint, police said, he wrote “NOW” twice on the sidewalk and once on a neighbors’ stairs as he walked back to the party. Then he opened fire.

As shots rang out, neighbors called 911. Before the police could tell Huff to lower the gun, Huff put the shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

“What he might have done if he was able to leave this scene and continue this rampage, I shudder to contemplate,” Kimerer said.