Family members of the woman killed in Seattle's homeless camp known as "The Jungle" Tuesday night don't want how and where Jeannine Brooks Zapata died to overshadow who she was.
"She was one of the most vivacious people I've ever known," Nadine Brooks told KIRO 7 on Thursday.
Brooks remembers her 45-year-old daughter as a strong-willed, charismatic woman who overcame a crack addiction in recent years and who happily lived with the love of her life in a home in Renton. "It was so neat," Brooks said, "because she became my daughter again."
"She wasn't homeless any longer, and that's very important to our family," Kimberly Sundstrom added.
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Both Sundstrom, who was the victim’s aunt, and Brooks said Zapata lived in the homeless encampment east of I-5 for 10 years beginning in the mid-1990s after her older sister was murdered. “She said, ‘I’m going to go find the killer.’ And that’s when The Jungle found her,” Brooks said of her daughter. “That’s when she became a crack addict.”
However, in recent years Brooks and Sundstrom claimed Zapata was sober, worked steadily in a number of Seattle-area hotels, and only went back to The Jungle this week to visit old friends. Zapata and James Tran were shot dead and three others were wounded by gunfire in The Jungle on Tuesday.
“She loved the people down there,” her mother said.
“I don’t know why she went down there. I don’t know why she was drawn down there,” her aunt said.
Whatever drew Zapata to The Jungle Tuesday night, her family members’ thoughts are with all the victims and their families. “They’re worthy of life,” Sundstrom said of the people who call The Jungle home. “She didn’t deserve to die. Neither did the person that was next to her, or the people that were shot next to her. None of them deserved that.”