Suspect's family shaken by slaying of police officer

The mother of Christopher John Monfort, charged with aggravated first-degree murder in the Oct. 31 shooting of Seattle police Officer Timothy Brenton, said Thursday the past week has left her family "in shock and disbelief and incredible sadness."

Suzan Monfort, 65, who flew from Alaska to Seattle earlier this week to be with her 41-year-old son, told The Seattle Times in an e-mail that she and her son's father have been refused access to his hospital room at Harborview Medical Center.

Christopher Monfort was shot twice by police last Friday after authorities say he tried to shoot at a detective who went to his apartment to investigate a car believed tied to Brenton's slaying.

One of two bullet wounds he suffered left him paralyzed from the waist down, his mother said.

On Thursday morning, King County Prosector Dan Satterberg held a news conference to announce charges against the Tukwila man — including the aggravated-murder count that could result in the death penalty.

Satterberg also filed charges alleging Monfort tried to kill Brenton's rookie partner, Britt Sweeney, officers who responded to an Oct. 22 firebombing of several police vehicles at a Seattle city maintenance yard and a detective who confronted him at his apartment complex.

In her statement, Suzan Monfort expressed concern over her son's chance for a fair trial in King County.

"We hope the criminal-justice system will be fair and want to believe that it works, but given the biased media response it is hard for us to believe he will ever get a fair trial," she said in her e-mail.

In a separate statement, issued through Christopher Monfort's attorney, Suzan Monfort expressed her family's "sincere sympathies" for the families of Brenton and Sweeney.

"Chris Monfort's family, like any other family in the same position, is heartbroken for all parties and is struggling to understand this tragedy," read the statement released by Julie Lawry of Associated Counsel for the Accused. "At the same time they love and stand by Chris and look forward to coming to a fuller understanding of recent events."

Lawry has met with Monfort several times at Harborview, but the man's family members have been told they have to wait until he's transferred to the King County Jail before they are allowed to visit.

In the week since Monfort was hospitalized, his family has declined to speak publicly. Thursday's e-mail in response to questions posed by The Times was the first time Suzan Monfort has discussed her only child, his upbringing, his aspirations in life and the future that lies ahead for him.

Monfort said she and her son are close. Although she lives in the rural western Alaska city of Bethel and he lives in Tukwila, they talked on the phone once a week and would travel to see each other often.

An only child, Monfort spent his early years in Indiana, where he lived until the sixth grade, his mother wrote. His family then moved to Alaska and Colorado, where he went to high school in Denver, she said.

"As a little boy it was Scouts, baseball, football, playing outside with friends at any chance," the mother wrote. "He loved putting model cars and airplanes together."

Monfort showed a particular interest in airplanes and collected books on them, his mother wrote.

He later learned to sky dive and, as an adult, added scuba diving, motorcycling and traveling to his interests, she said.

While in community college, Monfort began to paint, she wrote.

He "loved to paint to music and won a prize for one of his paintings" at school, she said. "He also is a lover of music," all genres, and taught himself guitar and would often give gifts of music to friends and family.

Monfort moved to the Seattle area about five years ago to look at schools, with the goal of studying computer science, the mother wrote.

While attending Highline Community College, he "realized he was a very capable student" and his interest shifted to law-related classes under the guidance of an instructor who mentored him, she said.

Christopher Monfort later earned a criminal-justice degree from the University of Washington in 2008.

During his studies, he produced an abstract of a project in which said he planned to "illuminate" the work of a George Washington University professor who is a proponent of a controversial principle, called jury nullification, where jurors disregard a judge's instructions and acquit a defendant no matter the strength of the evidence.

As part of the UW program, Monfort worked as a volunteer in the school program at the King County juvenile-detention center, where he confided that he had self-image problems related to his mixed white-and-black racial background, a school official said this week. His mother said that he often talked to his family about his work with juvenile offenders.

She said that he hoped to eventually teach courses in civil liberties as a way to "keep young men from getting deeper into the criminal system and wanted to be able to give them hope and not to give up."

Monfort's father lives in California and came to visit him after he was shot, the mother said. But he also was denied the chance to see his son, she said.

She wrote that she and her son spoke weekly on Sunday nights and that he spoke regularly to all members of his family — cousins, aunts, uncles and a grandmother.

Her account of their contacts paints a different picture from that of others who worked with him in the past several years. While working at the juvenile-detention center and a trucking job, he spoke rarely of his family, according to co-workers.

According to a police source, he recently lost his job as a security guard. Suzan Monfort said he applied to be a police officer in California nearly 20 years ago.

Information from Seattle Times archives is included in this report.

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com

Steve Miletich: 206-464-3302 or smiletich@seattletimes.com