New Delhi: The gunman who killed three Michigan State University (MSU) students and wounded five others before taking his own life had a history of mental illness and carried a note in his pocket indicating a threat to two New Jersey schools, as reported by Reuters.
Anthony McRae, who lived in the adjacent city of Lansing, Michigan, the state capital, had no known affiliation to the university or associations to any of his victims, MSU police said.
“We have no idea why he came to campus to do this,” Chris Rozman, interim deputy chief of MSU police, told reporters early Tuesday.
Among the evidence that surfaced on Tuesday, authorities in Ewing, New Jersey, said police had found a note in the gunman’s pocket that “indicated a threat” to two public schools in that Delaware River township.
An 85-year-old neighbor of McRae’s in Lansing, speaking on condition of anonymity, described him to Reuters as “a real hell-raiser” who often fired his gun on the property where he lived with his father.
“We’d hear the gunfire all the time, and then it seemed the cops were always down there for something,” the neighbor said.
The gunman lived with his father in Lansing, and had become increasingly angry and bitter since his mother’s death in September 2020 after a long illness, the father said.
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The suspect’s father, Michael McRae, told The Independent that his son was arrested for carrying a loaded firearm without a concealed-weapons permit in 2019. Thereafter he had asked Anthony to get rid of any weapons he had in his house.
“I don’t allow guns in my house,” Michael McRae said. “I don’t believe in that. I got my Bible. I didn’t know what he was going on doing and what was in his mind to do.”
His father said that Anthony had turned “mean” after his mother’s death two years ago.
“Anthony never got over his grieving,” Michael said.
He said that he started being mean and put “himself in his own sheltered world”, and despite asking him repeatedly if he needed help Anthony always said that he was fine.
Anthony was out of work for over 6 months, and Michael told The Independent he’d take him to register for disability and food stamps.
Speaking to Detroit Free Press, McRae’s older brother said that he “doesn’t have a clue” why he would do something like this.
“This just don’t seem real, that he would be able to do anything like this,” , told the Detroit Free Press the morning after the violence. “I am still trying to process this whole thing.”
Meanwhile, MSU cancelled all classes and other activities for 48 hours as traumatised students and faculty grieved for the victims.
The shooter, who went on a rampage on Monday, killed three students and injured several others before shooting himself. Police responded to a shooting at about 8.30 pm local time, following which the entire campus and surrounding neighborhoods were placed under a security lockdown and told the people to shelter in place.
The police searched for the gunman, with the manhunt ending about three hours later in Lansing.