Two killed in murder-suicide at UW

SEATTLE – A 26-year-old University of Washington researcher was shot to death in her office Monday morning by a former boyfriend who then turned the gun on himself, police said.

The woman, identified by colleagues as Rebecca Griego, had filed for a restraining order last month against her assailant, identified in court documents as Jonathan Rowan. University police said he was not affiliated with the school.

Officials also said the shooter had called Griego at least twice at work with death threats, and friends said she had passed around photos of Rowan and warnings about his threatening behavior.

“I cannot find him but he can find me (knows my place of work),” Griego wrote in a restraining order petition filed March 6 in King County Superior Court.

University Assistant Police Chief Ray Wittmier said officers who responded about 9:30 a.m. to a call of shots fired found the two people in an office on the fourth floor of Gould Hall, the university’s architecture building.

Wittmier said about six shots were fired, and a handgun was found in the room. There no eyewitnesses, and no one else was harmed in the shooting, he said.

Lance Nguyen, a researcher who worked with Griego at the Runstad Center for Real Estate Research, said she had become increasingly worried about her former boyfriend in recent weeks.

“She said it’s a psycho from her past,” Nguyen said.

Court records show Griego was granted a temporary restraining order on March 6, saying Rowan had threatened her, her sister and their dogs.

In applying for the order, she wrote that on Jan. 5, Rowan threw glass candle holders at her in a drunken rage, then tackled and punched her. The two were living together at the time.

“I forgave him because he was drunk but now I see that was wrong and he has threatened to hurt me again,” she wrote.

Griego wrote that in February, Rowan called her and threatened suicide, “because he couldn’t see me. I never called him back.”

The order required Rowan to stay 500 feet from Griego, her residence, workplace and dog.

Wittmier said campus police were not aware of the restraining order against Rowan. He also said he did not believe Rowan had permission to carry a handgun on campus, where firearms are generally banned.

University spokesman Bob Roseth said Griego had received phone threats at least twice at work.

Student Meghan Pinch, 27, said she was in a first-floor classroom when she heard several loud bangs. Pinch said she didn’t think they were gunshots at first, since there frequently were construction noises from the building’s architecture areas.

“No one wanted to really think it was real,” Pinch said, but police soon told students to evacuate the building. For several hours, students and staff milled around outside police barriers and later were allowed back inside in small groups to retrieve belongings.

Gould Hall, built in 1972, is in an urban neighborhood on the edge of the campus. The hall was closed for the day but was expected to reopen today, Roseth said.

In June 2000, a UW resident physician killed himself after fatally shooting his supervisor in the medical school complex, a few blocks away from Gould Hall.

Police said Dr. Jian Chen gunned down his supervisor, Dr. Rodger Haggitt, in Haggitt’s office after Chen was told his residency contract would not be renewed.