Suspect ‘out of his mind’ in Alaska, brother says

One day before Esteban Santiago opened fire in the Fort Lauderdale airport, he spoke to one of his half-brothers in Southwest Florida about the difficult time he was having, a family member told the Sun Sentinel.

“He called my older brother, and my brother told him ‘Come to Naples anytime you want. There is always a place for you to stay with me,’” Esteban Santiago’s brother said in an interview Monday.

Bryan Santiago said he does not know why his brother chose Fort Lauderdale to shoot passengers awaiting their luggage at an airport baggage carousel on Friday, as federal agents allege. Authorities have said he planned the attack that killed five people, buying a one-way ticket from Anchorage and checking only his 9mm semiautomatic handgun.

But Bryan Santiago speculated his brother may have intended to go to Naples, a twohour drive away where three of their half-brothers live. Esteban had visited family in Naples several years ago, his brother said.

After he was arrested, Esteban Santiago told authorities

that doctors said he may have schizophrenia, sources told the Sun Sentinel. That assessment came in November during a mental health evaluation after he sought help from the FBI office in Anchorage, Alaska, the sources said.

Bryan Santiago, speaking by phone from his home near Peñuelas, Puerto Rico, described his brother as “very pro-American” and said he’s been smeared on the Internet and falsely linked to terrorist groups. One photo circulating shows Esteban Santiago with a dark green keffiyeh, or scarf, around his neck and making what some interpreted as a one-finger sign associated with Islam.

“That was a souvenir he bought in Iraq when he was serving in the military, and then he took a picture,’’ Bryan Santiago said. “It was just goofing around.

“It’s like when someone goes to Hawaii and buys a Hawaiian T-shirt and wears it, does that make them a Hawaiian?” Bryan Santiago said.

Esteban grew up in Puerto Rico in a family of Baptists and never spoke of converting to Islam or embracing terrorism, his brother said.

“No, never. He’s never been a Muslim,” he said. “He’s always been Christian.”

Esteban joined the Army National Guard in 2007 and spent nearly a year in Iraq, where two soldiers in his unit were killed by a roadside bomb. Bryan noticed a change when his brother returned to Puerto Rico in early 2011.

“Sometimes he was like a regular person and, sometimes when you were talking with him, he’d explode with no reason. He got very angry with family members sometimes,” he said. “So you know I start saying, Hmm, this guy is not the same one he was before” he went to war.

While in Alaska in November, Esteban’s girlfriend told Bryan that Esteban went to the FBI office in Anchorage and told agents that the government controlled his mind.

“He went there because he didn’t want to do damage to no one,” Bryan Santiago said. “And he told them that.”

On Jan. 10, 2016, Santiago kicked in a door to his girlfriend’s bathroom, forced himself through the door and cursed at her to get out “while strangling her and smacking her in the side of the head,” according to the criminal complaint filed in the misdemeanor assault and property damage case.

The arresting officer, however, saw “no physical injuries” on the woman.

He pleaded guilty on March 24, 2016, and was ordered as part of a deferred sentencing agreement to complete a 12-week angermanagement program. It is unclear whether Santiago finished the program. A hearing was slated for March 28 for a status update in the case.

Esteban received some medical treatment at the Veterans Affairs in Puerto Rico, but his brother said he did not have details.

In Washington, Department of Veterans Affairs officials issued a terse statement that indicated only that Santiago was not receiving any benefits from the agency. When asked if he had applied to disability pension or medical care, VA officials did not return messages.

After Esteban returned from his tour in Iraq, his brother said, he used college education assistance for veterans to train to become a private investigator. He moved to Alaska in 2014 with his brother, who had a job at a seafood processor.

Esteban worked at a McDonald’s and lived with his brother. “It was there I could see this guy is out of his mind,” Bryan said.

Bryan returned to Puerto Rico, but Esteban stayed in Alaska, working as a security guard. He had a girlfriend and a newborn son.

Bryan said he last saw his brother in late October.

“He started talking to me, you know, that he’s seeing things weird things, that he’s hearing voices, that the government is using him ... that the CIA is sending him secret codes to his laptop,” he said. “And that he don’t want to do that. So I told to him go and ask for help. Go to the church or to psychologist or something.”

About two weeks later, Esteban went to the FBI in Anchorage.

The FBI contacted local police, who forced Esteban to undergo psychiatric treatment. He went to Providence Alaska Medical Center and then Alaska Psychiatric Institute, the only state mental hospital in Alaska, for a total of less than a week. After the hospitalization, he lost his security guard job, the girlfriend told the family.

Esteban had been living on the edge in the weeks before the shooting, living in a neighborhood of Anchorage known for vagabonds and prostitutes. His brother said he didn’t know how Esteban paid for his plane ticket to Fort Lauderdale. Asked about a possible motive, Bryan said, “I think [it was] his mind problem. Nothing more.”