Seattle killing of QAnon follower was self-defense, prosecutor finds
King County prosecutors will not criminally charge a man who fatally shot a woman in October outside her West Seattle home, saying he fired in self-defense at the former doctor who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Seattle Police Department investigators asked the King County prosecuting attorney’s office for a second opinion after determining the 41-year-old Tacoma man acted lawfully in the Oct. 1 shooting, police records show.
In a letter to Seattle police written in June, Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Thomas O’Ban agreed with detectives, saying the shooter had a right under state law to defend himself after Tamara Towers, 57, pointed a loaded shotgun at him and his co-worker.
The two men had gone to Towers’ house that day to serve her a civil notice to vacate the foreclosed home on Southwest Hudson Street, according to police records released this week in response to a public records request.
Towers’ sister, Tiffany Olsen, said their family does not believe the killing was lawful self-defense, and that her sister would still be alive had the two men been trained in de-escalation.
The family felt Seattle police never took their investigation seriously because Towers’ political beliefs were “so extreme,” Olsen said.
“They found it easier to believe she was this extremist cuckoo who deserved to die, rather than the incredible person she was,” Olsen, 54, said in a phone call Wednesday. “If our family had any strength in us, we probably would go after a wrongful-death lawsuit. But we just don’t.”
The man who shot Towers declined an interview request Tuesday. His boss, Towers’ ex-husband and other family members did not respond to phone and written inquiries. The Seattle Times typically does not name those who have not been formally charged with a crime.
Fierce and goal oriented
Towers’ death drew national media attention after details of her life emerged, including videos of her at the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., and her apparent fascination with QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory that gained traction online after President Donald Trump’s 2016 election.
First appearing in online chat forums in 2017, QAnon’s main theory – that a powerful group of satanic pedophiles has been working on “deep state” efforts to undermine Trump – quickly gained followers, including elected politicians, according to PolitiFact, a Florida-based nonprofit project.
Family members and neighbors told investigators Towers had lived alone and become increasingly erratic and estranged during the last several years of her life as her symptoms of multiple sclerosis worsened, including paranoia, delusions and disordered thinking, police records show.
Before her diagnosis, Towers ran marathons, loved hiking and doted on her nieces and nephews. Born in Seattle and raised in Montana, she spent years studying to become a doctor, graduating from the University of Washington School of Medicine, Olsen said.
Towers, who was also known as Tamara Towers Parry, lived strictly by the Hippocratic oath to “do no harm” and didn’t believe anyone should stop a beating heart, her sister said.
“She was just unrelenting and fierce and goal oriented, but kind and compassionate,” Olsen said. “Most importantly, she just loved people.”
Eventually, however, Towers transformed into someone her family no longer recognized – behavior changes her sister attributed to neurological damage linked to multiple sclerosis.
Her troubles began as early as 2015, when she stopped working for Swedish Health Services after developing a “rapidly progressive neurologic” condition, according to a federal court filing and the hospital group.
Towers chose to resign that year because she worried her judgment was no longer “as solid as she wanted,” and she did not want to potentially hurt a patient, Olsen said.
QAnon and other conspiracy theories found a “susceptible brain” in Towers. Her increasingly extreme political views unsettled her family – and eventually pushed them away, Olsen said.
The sisters had not spoken to each other for years, and Towers’ ex-husband finalized their divorce in 2019.
Two years later, videos circulated online of Towers attending the Jan. 6 rally wearing a red coat and carrying a flag, both festooned with a large “Q.” In one video, she smiles while describing getting pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed inside the government building.
The Washington Medical Commission announced in an X post two days after the attack that it had received multiple complaints against Towers.
The commission ordered Towers in November 2021 to undergo a mental examination and indefinitely suspended her medical license about two months later because she failed to respond, according to state records.
Olsen, who lives in Montana, said it was clear her sister suffered from extreme paranoia, but any woman living by herself would be afraid if two strangers – both men, one clearly armed – knocked on her front door.
Towers was likely holding the gun because she was afraid, but would never have actually fired, her sister said.
“Do I think it’s OK she opened the door with a shotgun? No, absolutely not,” Olsen said. “But I don’t think she would have ever hurt the person who came up to her at the door. I believe that with my heart and soul.”
‘She pointed right
at me’
Towers was kind, but had quirks, her next-door neighbor told police after the shooting.
The neighbor said Towers sometimes used binoculars to stare at planes flying overhead, because she believed they were watching her. She placed pieces of cardboard over her windows at night to make it appear as if she wasn’t home, and got rid of her cellphone because she was concerned about being tracked and monitored, the man told police.
Towers’ interest in QAnon was visible from the street outside her house, from which passersby could see the word displayed in large letters inside a second-story window, just above a large American flag hanging above her driveway.
Towers apparently refused to leave her home after it was foreclosed upon and sold at an auction for $1.2 million on Sept. 24. She had failed to make about $24,000 in mortgage payments and still owed more than $225,000 on the two-story house when it was sold, according to King County housing records.
A 43-year-old Renton man who buys and flips houses bought Towers’ house and went there several days later to deliver a civil notice to vacate to her, but she wasn’t there. He sent her text messages about the sale, and Towers responded with messages accusing him of conspiring with “hostile foreign agents,” according to images of the conversations in police records.
The buyer’s concerns about Towers grew after contacting her ex-husband, who said she was unstable and dangerous. He told investigators he asked his property manager to join him on Oct. 1 because he wanted a witness there when he tried visiting Towers again, police records show.
The property manager was carrying a handgun in his holster and his valid concealed pistol license when he and the buyer arrived at the house around 1 p.m.
After the buyer rang Towers’ doorbell, the property manager told police he watched through the house’s front window as she descended a staircase carrying a shotgun, according to police records.
Towers pressed the barrel of the gun against the window, and the buyer said he ducked behind a pillar, yelling that he was there to deliver paperwork. The property manager also backed away from the porch and stood near a padlocked fence leading to the backyard, police records show.
Towers opened the door and said, “I’m going to shoot you,” and pointed the gun at the buyer, who ran toward the street. The property manager told police he heard Towers rack the slide of her shotgun before she moved its barrel toward him, according to police records.
The man felt trapped. He didn’t think he could scale the fence, and running forward would leave him exposed. Fearing for his life, he drew his handgun from its holster and fired at Towers twice, striking her in the chest and back, police records show.
He ran forward and kicked away Towers’ shotgun before running to the buyer to ask if he had been hit. The buyer, who was not injured, called 911, and the shooter waved down police officers when they arrived within three minutes, according to police records.
“She pointed right at me,” the buyer told the dispatcher, according to a recording of his 911 call. “I’m lucky.”
Police officers and firefighters performed CPR on Towers, but pronounced her dead at the scene. An officer took the shooter’s handgun and the man gave police his concealed permit license before they took him and the buyer to Seattle police headquarters for interviews.
‘Do not expect a warning shot’
Investigators released both men after they told detectives in separate interviews that they believed Towers was going to shoot them, records show.
Police found two 9 mm fired shell casings near the front door, along with Towers’ weapon, a 12-gauge pump action shotgun loaded with one unfired shell, according to police records.
Investigators obtained a warrant that day to search inside Towers’ home, where they found a Glock 9 mm handgun inside her bedroom and a BB gun in a closet, where an officer had moved it after finding it on the stairs.
A notice of her home’s sale and the buyer’s business card were on her kitchen counter. Detectives also found four cellphones inside the house, all in airplane mode, police records show.
Almost every room in the house contained a decorative letter “Q.” Under Towers’ body by the front door were two metal signs, that read, “Warning due to price increase of ammo do not expect a warning shot,” and “I plead the 2nd.”
A sign on the side of the house read, “Protected by the 2nd amendment,” with a silhouette of a handgun, according to police records.
Investigators seized three boxes of paperwork from the living room floor, which contained folders with labels including “January 10 Blackmail” and “Q Mapping Project,” records show. The words “do it Q” were painted in large letters on the grass in the backyard.
In their report, Seattle police detectives wrote that the shooter likely acted in lawful self-defense because he had a legitimate reason to be at the house, had no safe place to flee and had a reason to fear for his life.
O’Ban, the county prosecutor, wrote in his letter that the shooter’s actions were most likely protected under state law.
“This case is indisputably tragic, but also insurmountably an apparent use of lawful force,” O’Ban wrote in the letter. “On this evidence, our office would not file criminal charges.”
O’Ban’s letter also referenced a situation involving Towers in 2023 in Bozeman, where she owned another property. Towers sent threatening emails to city employees that year after workers there tried disconnecting her utilities for nonpayment, Seattle police records show.
One of Towers’ emails suggested the city employees be publicly executed, and another contained a photo of a public works employee, according to Seattle police records.
Bozeman city officials banned Towers from City Hall and told her not to contact utility workers after an employee told investigators they had seen her with a shotgun while they painted a “dig box” on the public roadway in front of her house. Utility employees were told to request police any time they responded to her home, according to Seattle police records.
Towers appeared to bring similar suspicions with her to Seattle.
After Towers’ death, investigators found a letter from Puget Sound Energy in a laminated sleeve affixed to the house near its power meter. The electricity and natural gas supplier sends someone in person every other month to read its meters that don’t communicate wirelessly, police records show.
In a handwritten note on the letter, Towers appeared to identify herself as a federal law enforcement officer and accuse any meter reader of trespassing, according to a photo in police records.
She signed the letter “Dr Tammy Towers,” a “first do no harmer.”