Trauma Of Hearing Fatal Shots

ISSAQUAH

Some people in a comfortable Issaquah-area apartment community stood against their garage doors or near tidy bushes Saturday night and saw a woman's body in their neighbor's driveway - and a man with a gun.

They heard the man firing shots and crying that he killed his wife. They saw him lying beside her and, eventually, they heard one last shot.

The two were today identified as Victor Atienza Lamson, 54, and Gertrude Lamson, 50.

In sunlight, the remnants of what police are calling a likely murder-attempted suicide looked unimpressive - some limp yellow tape and white ash from police flares. But for neighbors who had watched the night before, things at the Summerwalk Apartments, in the 3800 block of Klahanie Drive Southeast, seemed changed.

"In that fire lane . . . I'll never forget," said Kevin Adams, who lives several buildings away from where the shooting occurred. The shooter "was laying next to her - on top of her practically."

Adams was in his apartment around 7:15 p.m. when his girlfriend came in and said she had just driven by a woman lying in a driveway.

Around the same time, Carl Epstein was sitting in his apartment, a level below the driveway, when he heard a gunshot.

"Then, within a minute, there were about three more - boom, boom, boom," Epstein said.

King County sheriff's officials say Lamson fired several shots from a semiautomatic pistol during a 35-minute period. Police believe he lives in the apartment complex, but not with Gertrude Lamson.

Victor Lamson was in critical condition today at Bellevue's Overlake Hospital Medical Center.

Neighbors said they hadn't seen a woman at the apartment before - just a middle-aged man and a younger man, around 30. Neighbors described both men as polite and relatively new to the neighborhood.

Adams didn't know them, and he couldn't make out any faces when he went outside after talking to his girlfriend.

"I heard him saying, `Forgive me for our children,' " Adams said. " `Oh my God' - he said that a lot. `Don't leave me' - he said that a lot. `I'm sorry' - he said that a lot.

"He sounded destroyed. Not anger - it was definitely sorrow. Rip-your-heart-out-to-hear-it sorrow."

Amie Teller, who moved into the apartments a few weeks ago, said she saw a different man crying - a passer-by who had heard the woman screaming for help just before she was shot. "It was amazing . . . seeing that body laying out with the dress nylons and the dress shoes."

Adams heard the man say he had killed his wife. "Then I hear him say this - I'll never forget it: `Lord, take me now.' "

Adams heard the trigger and the click of an empty chamber. Then another click. Adams moved closer, thinking the gun was empty.

Then, he heard reloading. Then a shot. Then he saw a greenish glow that looked like the glow of a cellular phone.

Sometime after the first 911 call, police received a second call from a man saying he had shot himself.

Authorities arrested the wounded Lamson and found Gertrude Lamson dead.

It was a traumatic event for the community, where some neighbors said they had never even heard a siren. Still, few seemed to have the day-after disbelief that often comes with crime in the suburbs.

"There's so many crazies in this world," Teller said. "This was just one."

Janet Burkitt's phone message number is 206-515-5689. Her e-mail address is: jburkitt@seattletimes.com