Wake Of Violence Murder-Suicide Tragedy Gives Families Pause To Question Neighborhood Safety

A frantic man in a suit and tie paced the parking lot of the Zip-Trip at Broadway and Felts, reaching over to touch his teenage daughter on the arm every so often.

“She goes to school at (North) Pines Junior High,” he said in amazement last Thursday. “My daughter walks by that house every day from school.”

Richard Ross’s afternoon of fury at 801 N. University last week left more than his own family in tatters.

The collective security of Spokane Valley residents suffered a major blow when Ross went berserk at his home, shooting his brother and sister and setting fire to the two-story, yellow house at Broadway and University.

People all over the Valley were left questioning their safety in the aftermath of Thursday’s violence, which left Ross and his brother dead, his sister horribly wounded and his elderly mother homeless.

The shock was especially apparent in the residential area surrounding the Ross home.

Children at nearby Broadway Elementary smelled toast cooking in the cafeteria Friday morning and thought it was smoke from the fire that destroyed the Ross home the day before.

Parents wondered if their children would be safe walking to school, or if they themselves were safe going to their cars.

“It’s changed our neighborhood,” Don Parks, who lives near the house where the violence erupted, said after the turmoil ended. “I walked by that house, and it was a disturbing feeling.

“It’s almost like an invasion. Your secure home is now insecure.”

People throughout the neighborhood echoed his sentiments.

“Yeah, it shocked us all,” said Lucy Johnson, who lives two houses down from the charred remains of the 87-year-old house Ross shared with his elderly mother, Ruth Ross.

Don Parks’s wife, Kerri, said reality sunk in soon after the shootings. Her stepson, 23-year-old Brandon Armour, went down the street to investigate the shooting last Thursday afternoon and was confronted by a pistol-wielding Ross.

Ross yelled obscenities and told Armour to mind his own business, Kerri Parks said.

“That’s when it hit me,” she said. “My son could have been shot.”

Another stepson, who is seven, was at Broadway Elementary at the time of the shooting.

Officials at the school, which was letting out for the day, kept children inside as armed deputies and firetrucks filled the nearby streets.

The boy was so traumatized by the uproar, Kerri Parks said, he didn’t want to come home and wound up spending the night at a friend’s house.

Valerie Schock’s 9-year-old daughter often rides her bike past the Ross house on her way to school.

If she had left school a little early last Thursday, she would have been right at that corner when the shooting began, Schock said.

“It was the perfect time for her to ride by and get shot,” she said. “It scared me to death.”

Ross, 46, shot his brother, Bob Ross, 37, of Mountain Home, Idaho, to death and wounded his sister, Barbara Janosky, 44, of the Valley, after a family dispute turned ugly.

Janosky, who manages the Sullivan Gables apartment complex on Sullivan Road, was being treated for gunshot wounds to the hip and abdomen earlier this week at Deaconess Medical Center.

Ruth Ross, 74, received minor injuries when she fell fleeing her son.

Richard Ross is believed to have died in the fire that consumed the house.

While the incident was shocking and unusual, the incidences of violence are increasing in the Valley, said Dave Lobdell, assistant chief at Valley Fire.

The population within the district covered by Valley Fire has almost doubled in the 21 years Lobdell has worked there, from 65,000 to 115,000, he said.

“As you double the population, you double the problems,” Lobdell said.

Cindy Wikle is taking that message to heart.

Wikle, owner of the Care-A-Lot Castle daycare center near Broadway and University, is instituting a disaster plan in response to the shooting.

Authorities were giving out conflicting information during the incident, and some parents couldn’t locate their children, Wikle said.

She has set up an emergency phone number at the center that parents can call, and she notified her clients that in case of evacuation, she will take their kids to Broadway Elementary.

Wikle also had her two children and a niece that lives with her write down the names and phone numbers of friends so she can reach them in case of a crisis.

“You never thought you’d need one here,” said Wikle, whose biggest emergency up to the shooting was a boy choking on a marshmallow.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 4 Photos (1 Color)

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Adam Lynn Staff writer Alison Boggs, Brian Coddington and Gita Sitaramiah contributed to this report.