The 32-year-old man who witnesses said stabbed his mother and three of her neighbors to death outside her Key Peninsula home before being fatally shot by a Pierce County sheriff's deputy Tuesday morning was Aleksandr Shablykin, KING 5 reported, citing Shablykin's sister.
The 52-year-old mother was identified as Zoya Shablykina.
Court and property records show Shablykina lived at the home in the cul-de-sac near Gig Harbor, and that Shablykin was her son.
A GoFundMe launched in support of Shablykin's sister said she lost her mother and brother to a tragic incident rooted in mental health struggles.
Authorities had not identified the suspect or four victims by Thursday morning.
Three neighbors who heard Shablykina's screams about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday ran outside to help and were fatally stabbed by her son, according to two neighbors who witnessed the attacks. The two neighbors, reached at their homes Wednesday, requested anonymity for their privacy and safety.
Authorities said they found four adults dead outside the home on 87th Avenue Court Northwest, including the suspect. A fifth person, also an adult, died of their injuries while being transported by Gig Harbor Fire.
Reached Wednesday afternoon at an Orting home, Shablykina’s 30-year-old daughter, Anastasiya Shablykina, declined to speak with a Seattle Times reporter, saying it was too soon to talk about the tragedy.
In Facebook messages to KING 5, the daughter said her brother stayed in her Orting garage for the last year while taking medication for bipolar disorder, a chronic mental health condition characterized by extreme mood swings. He stopped taking the medication three days before the attack, she said.
The woman described her mother as a good mother and grandmother to Anastasiya Shablykina’s 11-year-old daughter, Anna, who lived with her grandmother until she was 3. The 52-year-old “died loving” her son, she said.
“That was not my brother that did that,” her message said,. “It was something else, something evil.”
The deaths were a tragic end to the mother’s yearslong struggle to keep herself safe from her son, whose worsening mental health is documented in Pierce County court records dating to 2020.
Zoya Shablykina petitioned for and was granted a protection order against her son in 2020. In a Pierce County Superior Court filing, she wrote that her son had mental health issues and that she didn’t feel safe after he threatened his sister with a knife at their home. The order was extended through January 2022, court records show.
The mother petitioned for another protective order against her son in April 2025 after coming home to find her cat missing, framed pictures destroyed, the smoke detector going off and her son “acting delusional.” The woman wrote that her son had been threatening her, hurting her cat and believed he was an “Egyptian God,” according to her April 4 court filing.
A Superior Court commissioner issued the protection order and extended it through May 2, barring Shablykin from contacting or harming his mother or possessing weapons. But court records show the son did not attend the last May 2 hearing and was never served a copy of the order, which was set to expire after one year.
In Washington, protection orders must be served to the respondent to be enforced.
On Tuesday, Pierce County sheriff’s deputies received a report about 8:45 a.m. of a man violating a protection order. Deputies determined the order was not valid because it had not yet been served, authorities said.
A deputy was en route to deliver the man the order about 9:30 a.m. when multiple people called 911 to report he was stabbing people outside the 87th Avenue Court home. The deputy arrived and shot the man several minutes later, officials said.
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