The Pierce County medical examiner's office on Friday identified the four people killed in a series of stabbings Tuesday morning on the Key Peninsula that ended with a sheriff’s deputy shooting the suspect, 32-year-old Aleksandr Shablykin.
Shablykin's mother, 52-year-old Zoya Shablykina, was stabbed to death outside her home on a cul-de-sac of a small neighborhood in Wauna, a census-designated place just northwest of Gig Harbor.
The medical examiner's office identified the three others who were fatally stabbed as Joanne Kathleen Brandani, 59; Louise Sandra Talley, 81; and Stephanie Killilea, 67.
All five died in homicides in a public space, according to the medical examiner's office.
Authorities have not publicly identified Shablykin as the suspect, but a man who lives several houses down from Shablykina and witnessed the stabbings said he recognized the attacker as the woman’s son.
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 enforceable because it had never been served to the man, a requirement under state law, authorities said.
A deputy was en route to serve the man the order at about 9:30 a.m. when multiple people called 911 to report he was stabbing people outside his mother’s home on 87th Avenue Court. The deputy arrived and shot the man minutes later, officials said.
Authorities found Shablykin and three others dead outside of the woman’s home. A fourth victim died of injuries while being transported by Gig Harbor Fire, officials said.
Pierce County Superior Court records show Shablykina was granted a domestic violence protection order against her son in May 2025 that was set to expire after one year, but the Tacoma Police Department never served it to him.
Shablykina petitioned for the order in April 2025. She was initially granted a temporary protection order that expired after two weeks, and was to be served to her son at Wellfound Behavioral Health Hospital, a Tacoma facility providing inpatient mental health care for people with psychiatric disorders, records show.
A superior court commissioner extended the order for one year on May 2, but it’s unclear if Shablykin ever knew about it. He did not attend that day’s court hearing, and the Tacoma Police Department, the agency responsible for serving him the order by phone or in person, never served it to him, according to court records.
Tacoma police officers did not serve Shablykin the order because they do not serve protection orders to people who live or are located outside of the department's jurisdiction, spokesperson Shelbie Boyd said by phone Thursday. She declined to say which law enforcement agency was responsible for serving Shablykin the order.
The department sends protection orders back to superior court if they determine the respondent is outside their jurisdiction, Tacoma police spokesperson Sgt. John Correa said by phone Friday.
The Pierce County Superior Court clerk's office, reached by phone Friday, would not disclose an address listed for Shablykin on the protection order's cover page because the document is confidential.
For years, Shablykina sought to keep herself safe from her son, whose worsening mental health is documented in her protection orders and court records dating back to 2020.
Shablykina first petitioned for and was granted a domestic violence protection order in Pierce County against her son in 2020. In her superior court filing, she wrote that her son had mental health issues and she didn’t feel safe after he threatened his sister with a knife at their home. The order expired in January 2022, court records show.
The mother petitioned for another domestic violence protection order against her son in April 2025, two days after coming home to find her cat missing, framed pictures destroyed and her son “acting delusional.” In her court filing, Shablykina wrote that her son had been threatening and physically abusing her, hurting her cat and told her that her “grave has been already dug up.”
“I fear for my life,” Shablykina wrote in her petition. “His mental health has not improved but has only gotten worse.”
The order granted May 2 barred Shablykin from possessing weapons or contacting or harming his mother, or coming within 1,000 feet of her and her home for one year. He was also ordered to follow a treatment plan he received at Tacoma’s St. Joseph Medical Center, including taking medication, according to the court filing.
On Tuesday, a deputy did not arrive to serve Shablykin the protection order until about 45 minutes after someone reported he was violating it. By the time the deputy arrived and shot Shablykin, police say he had stabbed four people to death, including his mother.
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