TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A man who shot three people at a Florida State University library complained to police and property managers in New Mexico that cameras were watching him in his apartment and that he heard voices talking about and laughing at him, according to police reports released Friday.
Myron May walked into the Las Cruces Police Department in September to report he was almost certain there were cameras installed in his apartment and that he could hear voices commenting on his activities, a police report said. For instance, May told an officer, after a bubble bath he began applying lotion to his body and heard voices that said, “Did you see that? He never puts lotion on.”
May, a 2005 Florida State graduate, returned to the school early Thursday and shot two students and a library worker before reloading his semi-automatic pistol. Police
responded within two minutes and fired off a barrage of bullets that killed him.
Videos and a journal obtained by police indicate he thought he was being watched and targeted by the government.
The first 911 call from the shooting came from one of the victims, according to an initial Tallahassee Police report released Friday.
The victims are student Elijah Velez, 18, who was grazed by a bullet and treated at the scene; student Farhan Ahmed, 21, who was in critical condition when admitted to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and is still being treated, and library employee Nathan Scott, 30, who was shot in the leg. Police didn’t say which one called 911, but there were several more calls that followed.
In New Mexico, May apparently also suspected neighbors were watching him at his Las Cruces apartment. A woman who shared a wall with him had a football-sized landscaping rock thrown at her window at 2 a.m. Oct. 20. Responding officers talked to a maintenance man, who told them May complained to property managers that
neighbors were laughing at him as he watched pornography.
The officers then matched the rock to a gap in landscaping rocks in front of May’s apartment. The maintenance man told them he took care of May’s dog several times during his stays at a mental hospital, according to the report.
That incident happened less than three weeks before May returned to Wewahitchka, Florida, where he stayed at a guest cottage owned by friends.
Authorities Friday were examining packages May sent to friends before the Florida State shooting.
Joe Paul, a Washington, D.C., resident and motivational speaker who knew May from their time in Florida State student government, said postal inspectors intercepted a package May sent to him. The postal inspectors told him that the package contained nothing dangerous, and promised they would eventually release it to him.
“We want to know why this happened,” Paul said. “The sooner we know why this happened, the sooner we can start to heal.”
Paul said May mailed similar packages to about nine people. The FBI in Houston was examining another package delivered in Texas and others were believed to have been sent to Florida and elsewhere. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service said the packages weren’t a threat and said they were flat-rate, priority mail envelopes.
Florida State President John Thrasher greeted about 100 students Friday as Strozier Library reopened with a heavy police presence and the university resumed classes.
“I still don’t know there’s any real explanation why he picked Strozier, why he picked the time he did,” said Thrasher, who has been on the job less than two weeks. “That’s beyond, I think, anyone understanding now.”
University police participated in active shooter training less than two weeks
before the attack, including a scenario with a shooter at the library.
“It’s good to know we look at those opportunities where someone may try to
harm our students,” said university police Chief David Perry.
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Llorca reported from Las Cruces, New Mexico. Associated Press writers Gary Fineout in Tallahassee, Florida; Mike Graczyk in Houston, and Matthew Barakat in McLean, Virginia, contributed to this report.
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Insane, God given or drug induced, and packing…
Extreme paranoia, likely psychotic, and he had a gun. That’s America for you.
I live in Las Cruces. As a nurse and a past mental health professional, and I feel terrible that this young man was not properly treated here, which would have prevented his death and the injury to others. Like many other places in this country, we are in a very serious crisis in our community and in our state when it comes to being able to provide decent, consistent treatment for mental illness. Our only local hospital that did accept the mentally ill has decided it’s not a profitable venture and has de facto closed the only secured hospital-based behavioral health unit in the community.
Even though he stayed at our only remaining local “mental hospital”, as a profit making hospital it does not have to accept or keep any patient it chooses not to. Lately, because the of the closing of the other hospitals unit, they are getting slammed with every single psychiatric emergency and request for involuntary hold in town. It it appears they were so overburdened that they failed to fully assess the deep level of disturbance he was experiencing, not necessarily because they don’t care but because of the limitations of their resources and the nature of his illness.
Oftentimes, in paranoid schizophrenia (which his reported symptoms point to as a likely diagnosis), sufferers are some of the most high functioning patients seen. They are the ones who can attain college degrees, hold jobs, function relatively well until that final moment in which their illness balloons into full-fledged hallucinations and delusions. They can fake that they’re doing far, far better than they truly are, and in an overwhelmed mental health system, they’re the first to be “let go” on their own recognizance.
While I know this could have happened in any place in America, I am particularly saddened that it started here, in my community. I hope our leaders recognize this and start to implement a better response to our mentally ill as soon as possible.
Keep a close eye on Sharyl Attkisson.
This sounds a lot like my brother. He was afflicted with paranoid schizophrenia. He went from being an A and B student in college to all Ds and Fs from one semester to the next. The only drug he took was caffeine pills so he could study into the night, probably a big mistake. He heard voices and thought he was being persecuted by nearly everyone he encountered, especially our father. He thought he needed a gun to protect himself. The gun shop was happy to sell it to him even though he had deep scars from cutting the jugular vein. He probably would have died if he had not been in a hospital when he did it. He was obviously mentally ill. At that time, 20 years ago, a background check took 3 days and our father saw the receipt on his dresser while he was waiting for the gun. Dad called the gun shop and explained the situation. They insisted that they would proceed with the sale if he passed the background check. Dad then called the sheriff who was more sympathetic, but he said that because my brother did not have a felony conviction on his record, he could not prevent the sale. Dad finally tore up the receipt, and my brother moved on to other concerns. He spent 18 years in a community care facility before he died. Governor Brandstad has a metal health care initiative in our state. It is advertised as an improvement, but so far the mental health facility my brother lived in has been closed and is scheduled for demolition. Millions are being cut from the state mental health budget. The mentally ill and their families are dealing with a real crisis in this country.