She was a mail-order bride from the Philippines trying to escape a marriage gone sour, seven months pregnant and hiding from a husband who she claimed beat her and refused to let her return home.
On Thursday, Susana Remerata Blackwell sat on a courthouse bench with two friends who were waiting to testify at her annulment hearing.Police say her husband approached with a semiautomatic handgun and opened fire, killing all three women with shots to the head and chest. Susana Blackwell's fetus did not survive.
Timothy C. Blackwell was subdued by three prison guards who heard the shots from a nearby courtroom.
He "was standing in front of the people and he fired probably five or six shots," said Lois Edwards, an attorney in an unrelated case. "We just turned and ran."
Blackwell, a 47-year-old computer technician, was arrested and booked for investigation of homicide.
There are metal detectors outside some courtrooms in the downtown courthouse but not at the two public entrances. Judges asked for a better security system three years ago, said the county's presiding Superior Court judge, Anne Ellington.
Officials planned to have metal detectors at the entrances when the courthouse reopened Friday.
Blackwell's lawyer, Adrian Pimentel, said he couldn't "in a million years" have anticipated the shooting. But Susana Blackwell's lawyer, Mimi Castillo, said Blackwell had acted strangely in court the day before - particularly after his wife testified he was impotent.
"He basically said a lot of things that were totally untrue and he ranted and raved in front of the judge and, you know, nobody wanted to agitate him anymore," Castillo told KIRO-TV.
The Blackwells were married in the Philippines two years ago. They separated early last year, two weeks after Susana Blackwell, 25, came to the United States.
Blackwell filed for an annulment. His wife filed for divorce, seeking $350 a month in alimony for only six months.
She contended his beatings forced her to move out. He said she duped him into the marriage, in part so she could live in America. He also claimed that he was not the father of Susana Blackwell's unborn child.