News Naveed’s Apartment
“I came home after target practice one day and I had my pistol,” said Chris Richey, a friend and neighbor who lives in the Everett apartment building that Haq occupied until two weeks ago, when he suddenly disappeared, eventually driving to Eastern Washington to buy some guns of his own. “Naveed’s eyes got as big as dinner plates. He started asking me questions about my gun and it kinda made me nervous so I went into my apartment and locked it up.”
We rolled up to Everett yesterday to visit Haq’s Everett apartment in a tidy, spare boarding house of 11 apartments on Nassau Street, in a pleasant residential area a few blocks away from Puget Sound. Haq lived on the second floor. The SPD statement of probable cause lists two residencesan apartment in Kennewick and his parents’ house in Pascobut not the Everett apartment he lived in until two weeks ago. Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said search warrants had been issued to the Pasco and Kennewick residences (the latter is section 8, government-subsidized housing), but not the Everett apartment where he spent most of the summer, presumably unraveling. He left the building abruptly two weeks agoaround the same time Israel invaded Lebanon. Richey heard Haq had left the country, on a family emergency, and assumed he went to Pakistan, his family’s country of origin.
It’s unclear how Haq afforded two apartments. The statement of probable cause says Haq is unemployed (and, incidentally, had $12 in his pocket at the time of the shooting), but gives a business number, which goes straight to voicemail: “Naveed Haq is not available.” Haq told Richey and his Everett neighbors that he worked the night shift at a nearby Albertson’s, but we couldn’t find anyone at Alberston’s who had heard of him. Apart from the unnerving pistol discussion, Richey said Haq was “very pleasant,” a guy who was “tired of violence being everywhere. I liked talking to him. I probably talked to him more than anybody else. We talked about the Mariners, we watched baseball. He never seemed mentally ill or edgy or nothing. I was disappointed when he moved out [two weeks ago]. I enjoyed his company.”
Haq moved to Nassau Street roughly eight weeks ago, staying with a from his WSU days, where he earned a degree in electrical engineering in 2004, then rented an empty apartment in the same building. A couple of weeks later, he disappeared. Two weeks after that, on July 27, he picked up the pistols he had legally boughtwith the five-day waiting periodin the Tri-Cities area. The next day, on July 28, he was in Seattle and shooting.
“It’s just a real screwed-up situation,” Richey said. “Things don’t add up.”
For a quick hit on Haq’s state of mind, check this story in the Seattle Times. In the meantime, we’re doing more interviews today and tonight to try and fill in some of the gaps: Where did he get his money? Why did he move into a new apartment in Everett but leave his things in Kennewick? Why did he move out just a few weeks after he moved in?
Nothing new.