Signs of Distress Multiplied on Killer’s Path to Navy Yard
In the days before Aaron Alexis called the police in Newport, R.I., to complain that he was hearing voices sent by a “microwave machine,” employees at the Residence Inn in nearby Middletown were struggling to cope with his behavior.
Daily logs kept by the hotel detailed how on successive nights, he knocked on doors to find the voices, woke up a person in one room and frightened another so badly she asked to move. Then came a call from his employer.
“Brenda from The Experts Inc. called re: Mr. Alexis in 407,” a Residence Inn employee noted in a log dated Aug. 7 that was reviewed by The New York Times.
“She explained that he is unstable and the company is bringing him home,” the entry continued. “She asked me to check the room (it was vacant), and check him out.”
The call from the company, placed six weeks before Mr. Alexis, a former Navy reservist who the police say shot and killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard, suggests it had deep concerns about his state of mind and raises questions about why he continued to be sent to Navy bases in different states to work on their computer systems.
Company officials have said that although they knew Mr. Alexis was complaining about voices, they believed he was saying that the hotel was too noisy. The company did not respond immediately to requests for comment on Thursday.
It was one of numerous occasions in the weeks just before the shootings on Monday when Mr. Alexis’ increasingly bizarre behavior was noted by others, including hotel employees, guards at a Virginia airport and the police in Newport. Yet no one managed to head off the violence.
Much remains unknown about Mr. Alexis’ life and what drove his actions, gaps that are likely to remain at least partly unfilled with his fatal shooting by police officers at the navy yard. But as details emerge, they suggest a man engaged in an intense internal struggle for control, a battle he ultimately lost. And like other mass killers before him — James E. Holmes in Colorado, Jared L. Loughner in Arizona, Seung-Hui Cho in Virginia — he left a trail of telltale signs that were minimized, misinterpreted or ignored.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/us/signs-of-trouble-on-navy-yard-gunmans-path-to-tragedy.html
Perhaps we need to set up a mental health ombudsman that people can call to anonymously report that someone is behaving in a way that indicates mental disease and who can coordinate a community response to provide help.
