After hearing from both the victims and the perpetrator in a shooting at Vancouver’s Veterans Affairs campus last year, Clark County Judge Suzan Clark strayed from an agreement between attorneys and sentenced Deborah Lennon to 22½ years in prison.
Having worked in a courtroom as a judge and a lawyer since 1986, Clark said: “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more disturbing case in so many ways.”
Lennon spent about two years stalking Allen Bricker, her former supervisor at Veterans Affairs. She wrote Bricker hundreds of emails where she professed her love, urged Bricker to leave his wife and eventually made threats to kill him.
She tried to follow through with those threats on Feb. 4, 2014, when she walked into Bricker’s fourth-floor office and shot him. Bricker survived his injuries but still has two bullets lodged in his body — one in his spine and one in his chest muscle.
Lennon pleaded guilty last month to first-degree attempted murder, second-degree assault and cyberstalking. Deputy prosecuting attorney James Smith said that as part of the plea agreement with Lennon’s attorney, Steve Rucker, he requested Lennon serve 240 months, or 20 years, in prison.
But after hearing emotional statements from the victim, his family and Lennon, Clark gave Lennon the maximum.
“I very seriously take into account the work that everybody did to reach this agreement and resolution, but the judge is the one with the final say when it comes to sentencing,” she said. Her choice, she said, “will give 2½ more years where Mr. and Mrs. Bricker and their children don’t have to look over their shoulders.”
Lennon worked at Veterans Affairs as a financial auditor alongside Bricker. Lennon became infatuated with Bricker, though he did not return her affection, according to court records related to a protection order Bricker sought in January 2013.
“She told me in an email she’d make my wife a widow and my kids orphans,” Bricker said in court on Friday. “I could tell from her emails that she was enjoying herself … she was enjoying the terror that she was causing.”
At Friday’s hearing, Bricker said that during an attempt to serve Lennon with a restraining order, police couldn’t find her.
“That was a feeling of helplessness, of being reduced to powerless,” he said. “It was frustrating and mentally terrifying. That weakness far exceeds any of the bullets and the surgeries. It takes hope from you; it’s a pain that lingers even today.”
After Lennon left her job at Veteran Affairs in 2012, she lived in Arizona for 15 months. Then she returned.
She moved to her aunt’s home in Portland and purchased a firearm. Lennon showed up at Bricker’s office two to three weeks before the shooting and was escorted off the property, court documents say. Afterward, employees said they installed locks on the back door of the office to prevent her from sneaking in.
But at about 4 p.m. on a Tuesday, Lennon managed to get into the building and shoot Bricker twice in the back.
“I did nothing to deserve this,” Bricker said in court on Friday. “I barely knew this person.”
The shooting stopped when Veterans Affairs employee and former Marine Neil Burkhardt, 31, of Portland tackled Lennon and wrestled away her handgun. He and other Veterans Affairs employees detained her until police arrived.
Clark called Lennon’s actions of shooting Bricker in the back cowardly. She also commended Burkhardt, saying that he was the only reason the charges before Lennon weren’t homicide.
When Bricker addressed the judge, he asked her to imagine walking in his shoes.
“What she did violates a person’s soul, and it is the most cruel and selfish choice I can imagine,” he said. “I would ask that you show this evil, manipulative person that our society does not allow people to randomly select a family and terrorize them.”
Bricker said that throughout the entire incident of stalking, he was advised not to talk to Lennon. On Friday, however, he let her hear what he wanted to say all along.
“Three bullets later, I’ll talk to her, I’ll respond to those threats,” he said. “You are an evil, wicked person … you leave a stupid and pathetic legacy. What you have done is not forgivable.”
Rucker, Lennon’s attorney, said that Lennon is a desperately confused person who suffers from bipolar disorder, delusions and paranoia.
“Deborah Lennon is not the devil … she could not see that she was causing terror,” he said. “She was lost when she left the VA … Her mistake was that she believed she was being watched and she was being followed.”
During her statement, Lennon apologized to the Brickers and to her former colleagues at Veteran Affairs.
“Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014, is a date I will never forget and it is a date I will always regret. I wish I could explain what was going on in my mind at that time but I can’t,” she said. “There is no explanation for my behavior.”
Dozens of Veterans Affairs employees attended the hearing to support Bricker, who hasn’t returned to work since the shooting.
Burkhardt said after the hearing that he was happy it was over and pleased with the sentence Lennon received.
“(Judge Clark) obviously knew how heinous this crime was as everyone described, I mean it was an ambush,” Burkhardt said. “I’m glad she added the couple years that she did, that’s very comforting for everyone involved.”
Clark said that prior to Friday’s hearing she didn’t know too many of the details about the case, but after hearing from the victims she said more should have been done to assist the Brickers through the stalking.
“For the family, the Brickers, the system failed them,” Judge Clark said. “Intervention may have saved the situation from ever happening and it didn’t.”
