Barricaded man suffered brain damage after pro football career
McCall played for CMU before landing a spot in the Arena Football League
Jonathon McCall of Royal Oak had a much different life long before he barricaded himself inside his family’s home while a SWAT team and other officers swarmed around the house Monday.
Royal Oak police were called to the house in the 1600 block Whitcomb after authorities said he assaulted his wife and another family member.
Wearing a bulletproof vest, McCall refused to exit the house in a standoff that lasted several hours.
Finally, SWAT officers used a Taser when he stepped out on the porch to subdue and arrest him.
When he was arraigned via Zoom from jail the next day on misdemeanor charges of domestic assault and a second assault, Royal Oak 44th District Magistrate William Urich set the suspect’s bond at $100,000 cash.
“Good Luck, Mr. McCall,” Urich said. “I wish you the best of luck and good fortune to stay on the path.”
That path took a formidable turn for the worse following McCall’s years as a football player, where he started out fast and strong before he began suffering chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a chronic, degenerative brain disease.
McCall, who prepped at Troy High School, went on to have a standout career at Central Michigan University. He has the fifth most quarterback sacks in a season in school history and, after playing at CMU, landed a spot with Chicago of the Arena Football League.
He played in the AFL from 2000-2006, spending time not only with Chicago but also the Detroit Fury as well as Orlando, Kansas City and Carolina.
Like others who play intensive contact sports, the cumulative effects of scores of concussions
began showing up several years after McCall’s professional football career ended.
First he and his wife, Sara, got jobs working with a mortgage company in 2007 and settled in Troy, she told Yahoo Life in 2018. But McCall’s symptoms increased in 2012.
In a GoFundMe page his wife set up in 2017 she said McCall was deemed permanently disabled after his CTE diagnosis.
“I began noticing a shift in his personality and changes in his memory,” she said on the GoFundMe page.
As the disease began its inexorable course, McCall sometimes forgot his wife’s name, how to compose emails and, at times, who his children were.
McCall was finally diagnosed with CTE in 2014. Three years later, according to the GoFundMe post, McCall’s doctor told his wife his symptoms had gotten 67 percent worse.
“My hope for my husband is that we can ease his symptoms before anything tragic happens,” Sara said at the time.
Now 46, McCall was diagnosed with early onset dementia when he was 39.
Family members of those diagnosed with CTE report that those with the brain disease have problems with thinking, emotions, mood, suicidal thoughts and problems with normal daily activities, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Police on Monday said they learned McCall had recently purchased long guns. Officers found and confiscated weapons inside the house, along with ammunition, night vision goggles and a tactical vest.
Detectives are continuing their investigation. McCall is due back in Royal Oak 44th District Court for a hearing at 2:30 p.m. April 9.