Family remembers Culotti as loving, charming

To many, Danny Culotti was the troubled young man who was shot to death in Seattle's Westlake Plaza nearly two weeks ago when he inexplicably went berserk and attacked an armed stranger. The same Danny Culotti who five years earlier stormed the day care his mother ran out of the family home and set fire to the house.

But the portrait of Danny Culotti pulled from newspaper and television accounts of his violent death is at odds with the Danny Culotti his family chooses to remember.

Their Danny Culotti was also a fun-loving, devoted son with a 100-watt smile, a charmer once voted "Biggest Flirt" of his Seattle high-school class, a talented youth with limitless promise, and the product of a loving family.

That's the Danny Culotti they want you to know — not the man whose personal prison built of drugs and mental illness made him the stuff of grim headlines.

"It made it seem like the world was better off without him," Culotti's cousin, Liz Culotti, 23, of Toronto, said of the news coverage of his death. "Like it was a good thing he was shot. But he was wonderful, and he had the biggest, most beautiful smile, and somebody needs to say something good about him."

Culotti's family gathered last week to bury him, and to speak on his behalf and offer a different view of the man behind the headlines. Their message, boiled down to bare bones: Mental illness hits good people from good families, and sometimes there's really nothing that anybody can do to fix it.

"He was a bright and beautiful child who made the world a better place," said his uncle Joe Culotti, "until struck with this terrible illness."

One of four sons

Children seemingly always filled Sam and Melinda Culotti's home, whether it was their own kids or someone else's. In addition to Danny, the couple have three other sons: Tony, 35, a car salesman and the doting father of a little girl; Nick, 32, a firefighter recruit for Maple Valley; and Joshua, 23, a recent graduate of the University of Washington who manages a Burgermaster restaurant in Bothell.

Melinda, 57, began running a day care out of their Phinney Ridge home about 25 years ago, around the time Danny was born, because it let her be home with her children while earning some money.

She loved it, too, and had activities and outings with the kids, she said. She took them to the zoo, served on the PTA, baked and didn't worry about a little mess in the house.

Sam Culotti, 62, took his boys camping, coached their Little League teams and ran them to soccer. Sam, who managed a Burgermaster in the University District, got each of his boys their first jobs at the restaurant. Each stood out in his own way, he said.

Even as a toddler, Danny was full of personality and charm. His grandparents called him the "Little Movie Star," and he had a way of making all his ideas seem like good ones. He was the one who persuaded his siblings and cousins to climb the roof and shoot berries at passers-by, recalled his cousin Liz.

He was the one who could coax a midnight snack from his tired father.

"I couldn't resist that smile," said Sam.

Even in elementary school, he had a special way with the girls and teachers and people in general.

"They just loved him. He was so cool. Everybody wanted to be Danny," Josh recalled.

"A little special care"

At the same time, Danny's father said, he had a side that was sensitive and fragile. His discipline had to be measured. "I always had to take a little special care with him."

Sam got Danny his first job washing dishes at the restaurant, and Danny proved himself adept in the kitchen. "He had good food sense," said his dad, "and if he hadn't gotten ill, I think he might have gone on to culinary school."

But that year, Danny's senior year at Ingraham High School, something started to go wrong.

Danny, who had always dressed and groomed meticulously, seemed to stop caring about his appearance.

His mother chalked it up to teen hormones.

"I just thought I had another teenager on my hands," she said.

His father remembers a time when they were at work together and Danny stopped him. "Dad?" Sam recalls his son asking. "I think I'm crazy, you know?"

Sam brushed him off. "I said, 'You're fine.' I thought he was having girlfriend problems or something," Sam said.

"I tell you, that should have been a red flag, but it wasn't and I blame myself for not catching it."

About the same time, Danny began to experiment with alcohol and quickly became a problem drinker.

"I drank beer while I was in high school, that's no big deal," Sam said. "But Danny was getting drunk all the time and the more I'd lecture him, the more it seemed he would do it."

A suicide attempt

One night, Sam and Melinda got a call from the police. Danny was in an emergency room at Harborview Medical Center claiming he'd been jumped. It turns out, police told them, that he'd jumped from a highway overpass in a suicide attempt. The family got him into counseling.

He slit his wrists.

He was sent to Western State Hospital mental institution, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and put on antipsychotic medicines.

"He went to Western, and after that he was never the same," his father said, shaking his head and speaking slowly. "He was tormented."

Then Danny began a cycle, Sam said. Danny would go on his meds, start feeling better and then stop, only to revert into illness. At some point, his family said, he became addicted to the crack cocaine he used to self-medicate.

While suffering from a schizophrenic episode in July 2001, Danny attacked his mother inside the family's former residence on Palatine Avenue North in Seattle and set the house on fire. Melinda and the seven children she was caring for escaped unharmed.

Danny told police and family members he was trying to rid the house of demons.

He later pleaded guilty to first-degree arson and was sentenced to just under two years in prison. He served nine months.

While Danny was in prison, the family rebuilt the home and Melinda reopened the day are. Sam and Melinda forgave their son, but it was harder for their other boys, who struggled with anger.

"I was mad at him because I believed it was an obvious attack on our parents and I didn't understand the scope of his sickness," Nick said. "When I found out, I couldn't be mad at him, but he never forgave himself for the fire."

A couple of years ago, Sam's brother offered him a construction job in their hometown of Syracuse, N.Y., and Sam and Melinda decided to make the move.

He sounded normal

Danny, who was scheduled to get off probation Oct. 15, was supposed to move to Syracuse this week. Sam, who'd always been able to soothe Danny and calm him down, had already bought the ticket to fly to Seattle and pick him up.

The plan was for Danny to stay with his parents while he found a job, get steady on his meds and get on his feet.

For the first time in years, his uncle, father, brothers and cousins say, he'd sounded good and normal on the phone.

Their hopes were high.

"I just feel like if I was here, I might have been able to calm him down and maybe this wouldn't have happened," Sam said.

According to Seattle police, several 911 calls came in around 11 a.m. that Saturday from people who claimed a man in a yellow shirt was acting erratically, yelling insults and threatening pedestrians near the intersection of Pike Street and Boren Avenue. A half-hour later, a man who matched that description and was later identified as Danny was reported to have attacked another man.

The other man had just finished lunch and was minding his own business when Danny told him, "I am going to kill you," according to police spokeswoman Debra Brown. Danny began punching and kicking the man until the man fell, she said.

The victim of the attack, a 52-year-old homeless man, pulled out a .357-caliber revolver and fired one round, striking Danny in the abdomen. Danny later died. The man had a concealed-weapons license and was in legal possession of the handgun, police said. He was questioned and later released.

The family has heard other versions, though, from other street people who say they saw the whole thing go down.

They say Danny and the other man knew each other from the streets and that the 52-year-old had been hassling Danny for money, even grabbing the younger man's shirt, when the fight began.

"We have a lot of questions, and we want the police to investigate," Josh said.

Police are still investigating the circumstances surrounding Danny's death, spokesman Jeff Kappel said.

Still, Danny's family knows there are no answers that will bring him back. They acknowledge they may never really know what happened, and they're trying to make peace with that, trying to find some sense of purpose in Danny's death.

"Maybe it will make a difference if we can let people know that we loved him and cared for him even in his illness," Sam said. "That he wasn't a throwaway person."

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com