Police: Student used father’s gun to shoot parents in dorm

19-year-old acted strangely the day before, officials say

A 19-year-old student suspected of fatally shooting his parents at a Central Michigan University dormitory had been acting so strangely the day before the killings that campus police talked to his mother and then took him to a hospital for suspected drug abuse, authorities said Saturday.

University Police Chief Bill Yeagley said James Eric Davis Jr.’s parents had just picked him up from that hospital and brought him to his dorm to pack up for spring break when Friday’s shooting happened. He said the gun used in the shooting belonged to Davis’ father, James Davis Sr., a part-time police officer in the Chicago suburb of Bellwood.

Yeagley would not say whether the father had brought the gun to the university’s campus in Mount Pleasant, Mich., when picking up his son, but he noted that Davis Jr. can be seen on video in the dorm’s parking lot with the gun before he entered the residence hall where his parents were shot around 8:30 a.m.

“We can make a lot of assumptions, but I’m not going to make those assumptions. But I can tell you for sure that the gun came from outside, in the parking lot, with (Davis Jr.) through the building,” Yeagley said.

Davis Jr. has been charged with two counts of murder and a weapons charge in the shootings, university spokeswoman Heather Smith said Saturday.

Yeagley said police had first come into contact with Davis Jr. on Thursday morning when he came running into a community police officer’s office in his dorm “very frightened” and “not making a lot of sense.”

“He said someone was out to hurt him. … Mr. Davis was very vague, and he kept talking about someone having a gun,” Yeagley said, adding that Davis Jr. said he had not actually seen the person with a gun.

Davis Jr. eventually talked about riding in a dorm elevator with the person, and police went to talk to the individual Davis Jr. had identified. Yeagley said that when officers determined that the person posed no threat — and reviewed video from the elevator that showed Davis Jr. and that person laughing — Davis Jr. said he was fine and was leaving campus Friday for spring break.

Hours later, officers spotted Davis Jr. in a dorm hallway with his suitcases, Yeagley said. When officers tried to talk to him, he again wasn’t making sense, Yeagley said. They asked Davis Jr. to call his parents, which he did. An officer then spoke to Davis’ mother, Diva, told them about her son’s behavior, their concerns about possible drug use and asked her whether he had a history of drug use, Yeagley said.

Yeagley said Davis Jr. had not been previously identified by campus officials as someone that others on campus were concerned about.