Mendocino County murder suspect Aaron Bassler was shot and killed by Sacramento SWAT team members after a five-week manhunt in the woods around Fort Bragg Saturday. As we reported earlier, the schizophrenic Bassler had been evading capture and living off the land since the end of August, following a shooting that left Fort Bragg city councilman Jere Melo dead. Bassler was also wanted for an August 11 murder just north of town, and just last week had engaged in a shootout with authorities who had arrived from multiple jurisdictions to help hunt him down. Bassler was sniffed out by a bloodhound about six miles east of Fort Bragg, and he was shot seven times by SWAT team guys awaiting him in the trees.

Bassler's death had seemed like an inevitability as of last week, when it was clear he was not going down without a fight.

The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reports now that a mental health advocate, Bassler's family, and Fort Bragg officials are now pushing county officials to adopt Laura's Law, which makes it easier to force treatment upon the violence-prone mentally ill. They believe these three deaths might not have happened if Bassler had been forced into receiving treatment long ago.

In early 2009, as it happens, Bassler was arrested in San Francisco for tossing a fake bomb and drawings of space aliens over the fence of the Chinese consulate. Bassler ended up on federal probation and received psychiatric treatment following that incident, and his father said he "toed the line" and stayed out of trouble for a while, living with his mother. He then began to backslide in the last year, and got arrested in Februrary 2011 for driving his car onto a tennis court and being drunk and disorderly. At that time his family tried to get the court to intervene concerning his mental health, warning that he could be a danger to the community, but the court refused.

Laura's Law is currently only fully enforced in Nevada County. The law was named for Laura Wilcox, who was shot by a mentally ill man in Nevada County in 2001.

[AP/Chicago Sun-Times]
[Press-Democrat]

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