Friends Had No Idea He Was Violent

SEATTLE — The future once seemed very bright for Naveed Afzal Haq, the son of a Pakistan-born civil structural engineer at the Hanford nuclear complex in Washington state.

Bound for a prestigious bio-dentistry program in Philadelphia, Haq had a huge smile on his face in his 1994 senior yearbook photo at Richland High School in south-central Washington. "RHS, Peace Be Unto You" were his parting words to classmates.

It was Haq -- now 30 and facing trial in his hometown on a lewd-conduct charge -- who came to Seattle on Friday and is accused of using two semi-automatic handguns to unload a barrage of bullets inside the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle.

To force his way in, he took a 13-year-old girl hostage at gunpoint, police and witnesses said Saturday.

Haq reportedly shouted about his anger toward Jews, toward Israel and its war in Lebanon, and toward U.S. policy in Iraq. One woman, Pam Waechter, 58, the federation's assistant director, was killed, and five other women were injured.

One of the shooting victims -- Dayna Klein, 37, of Seattle -- was credited by police with helping to end the attack.

Police said that about half an hour before the shooting, Haq had been stopped on a minor traffic violation -- for driving down a buses-only lane -- but had done nothing to arouse an officer's suspicion and had been let go.

Those who knew Haq best described him Saturday as a drifting, sad and mentally troubled figure who was a source of worry and embarrassment for his parents, but not anybody's idea of a political or religious zealot inclined toward violence.

He washed out of the dentistry program after a few years and landed back in Richland -- unfocused, unlucky in love and apparently eventually unstable. In March, prosecutors said, he climbed on top of a fountain near a Macy's in a Richland-area mall, unzipped his pants and started exposing himself to women. Haq had been due to go to trial Thursday on the exposure charge, but the trial has been postponed.

On Saturday, shackled and wearing a white jail uniform labeled "ultra security," Haq was charged with one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder, his bail set at $50 million.

He had $12 on him when he was arrested, police said.

Law enforcement authorities, Haq's friends and his parents' friends all said Saturday that Haq's inner motivations remained a mystery. Some speculated he might have sought to cloak an animus toward women by acting as a self-appointed warrior against Israel or against Jews.