Classmates Say Loukaitis Knew He Was A Killer

Three classmates testified Monday at the trial of Barry Loukaitis, recalling comments he made in the months before he killed three people at a Moses Lake junior high school - comments dismissed as dark jokes that now seem chilling.

“He said he was going to kill somebody before he died,” said Preston Lottmar, 16, recalling a statement he overheard Loukaitis make to a group at the school library.

Loukaitis also talked about gangs in the honors English class they took together at Frontier Junior High in the 1995-96 school year, Lottmar said. “He didn’t like them at all. He said if he ever killed, it’d probably be gang members.”

Earlier in the day, Bellevue psychologist Delton Young told the court Loukaitis had been hostile to people “causing trouble in society, such as gangs.”

Young said it was his feeling Loukaitis associated Manuel Vela with that group, “rightly or wrongly.”

On Feb. 2, 1996, the then-14-year-old Loukaitis dressed in all-black Western gear and shot four people in his fifth-period algebra class.

Vela, 14, was the first. Loukaitis also killed Arnold Fritz, 14, and teacher Leona Caires, 49, a former Coeur d’Alene educator. Student Natalie Hintz, then 13, was critically wounded and still has not fully recovered from her injuries.

Loukaitis is pleading innocent by reason of insanity to three counts of aggravated first-degree murder, one count each of attempted murder and second-degree assault, and 16 counts of kidnapping.

Now 16, Loukaitis is being tried as an adult. If convicted, he could face life imprisonment.

Another student, Raquel Salazar, 17, told the court Loukaitis and Vela were both in her third-period science class in the 1995-96 school year.

Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, she said, “I made a mistake, and he (Loukaitis) said I was stupid and some people just don’t deserve to live.”

Salazar said she thought he was teasing.

Another time, he was called to the office of then-Vice Principal Stephen Caires, Mrs. Caires’ husband. When he came back to class, Salazar said, he “mumbled under his breath that he hated Mr. Caires.”

Under questioning by defense attorney Michele Shaw, she conceded nobody liked being called to the office.

Salazar said she never saw Loukaitis in a good mood. There was a lot of teasing in the classroom, but he never took part, she said.

Melissa Conrad, 16, testified that Loukaitis asked her in seventh grade to be his girlfriend. She told him no, she said, and he walked away.

In ninth grade, she recalled that once “I was walking by and I looked at him, and he said he was going to kill me.”

Conrad said she thought he was joking.

On the day of the shootings, she was in a typing class across the hall from Mrs. Caires’ math class. The door of her classroom was open.

“I saw Barry in a trench coat and a hat in the hall,” she said. “He was looking at me, and then he walked down the hall.”

Asked what kind of look it was, Conrad said, “Regular looking.”

“I didn’t tell anybody,” she said. “Because I was scared.”

Lottmar said Loukaitis was more outgoing and had more friends in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. At the end of eighth grade and early ninth grade, he said, Loukaitis’ primary interaction with other students was to curse them, tell them to shut up or order them out of his way.

Young, who testified for the prosecution, and Dr. Julia Moore, who testified for the defense, came to different conclusions about Loukaitis’ mental state even though they relied on the same diagnostic text, called the DSM IV, in assessing the boy’s symptoms.

Under questioning from a defense attorney, Young acknowledged “there’s room for argument” about whether Loukaitis meets the criteria for bipolar disorder, also called manic depression.

Psychiatrists testifying for the defense could be right and he could be wrong about Loukaitis’ mental health, Young said - but he made clear he considers that unlikely.

He agreed it is possible to reach a provisional diagnosis after one visit - as Moore did after her first contact with Loukaitis a week after the shootings.

But after that, Young said, “One may not be open to data that contradict your conclusion.” He said it is possible to then see a patient several times “and keep making the same mistake.”

Defense attorney Mike Frost also asked Young about the genetic nature of depressive illness. The psychologist said a family history of such disorders does not mean one will suffer from the disorder - just that one is more vulnerable to it than most.

Other factors - environment, experience, stress - play a role, he said.

“There is no such thing as a genetically predetermined mental illness,” Young said.

The case is being heard here because of concerns about extensive publicity about the case in Grant County, 175 miles east.