Vet blames shooting on bad mushroom trip
A Marine Corps veteran accused of stripping himself naked at his Richmond District home on New Year’s Eve, firing a gun and threatening to kill his landlord — while his wife shielded the couple’s infant and tried to calm him with prayer — was hallucinating on psychedelic mushrooms.
That is the account the man’s attorney provided in San Francisco Superior Court last month, blaming a combination of psilocybin mushrooms and other medications for causing Evan Supinski’s “psychotic” break that made the 33-year-old believe he was “in the Garden of Eden,” according to court records obtained by the Chronicle.
Weighing the threat that Supinski posed to public safety, a judge agreed to release him from jail last month to a veterans rehabilitation program while he faces charges. Supinksi’s landlord, who is also a Marine Corps veteran, opposed the release, testifying that Supinski had threatened to shoot him and called him “Satan” during the daytime shooting spree that resulted in gunfire damage to two cars and a neighbor’s home, court records show.
Supinski pleaded not guilty to 10 charges last month, including the illegal possession of a gun, vandalism, making criminal threats, negligent discharge of a firearm within city limits and shooting an inhabited dwelling.
The cornerstone of Supinski’s legal defense, court documents show, is that he was under the influence of a large dose of psilocybin mushrooms, also known as “magic” mushrooms, during his apparent break with reality.
According to his attorney, Supinksi’s mushroom-fueled “psychotic” episode began on the morning of Dec. 31, when he stood naked on top of a car parked on 41st Avenue, fired an unregistered gun and made the threats against his landlord, who had attempted to intervene, before being subdued and taken away by police, court records show. Supinski’s wife and baby were home at the time.
Supinksi’s attorney, Rebecca Young, told a judge last month that Supinski is a Marine combat veteran who served in Afghanistan and whose medication for post-traumatic stress disorder may have adversely interfered with the mushrooms he consumed around 10:30 a.m. that day, according to court documents. Fungi containing psilocybin act on the brain’s serotonin system to produce hallucinations and, at high doses, can cause panic and psychosis.
When reached for comment, Young called Supinski “a loving and devoted father” and “decorated Marine Corp veteran diagnosed with service-connected, combat-related PTSD who had a complete mental breakdown after ingesting an inordinate amount of psilocybin.”
Young’s arguments persuaded the judge to release him under strict conditions to Fresh Start, a transitional living program for veterans in the Sunset District. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Teresa Caffese agreed to the release on the grounds that there are few mental health services available to inmates at the San Francisco jail.
The court proceedings come amid renewed attention to psychedelic drugs, as state Sen. Scott Wiener attempts for the third time to legalize their use under supervised treatment. Wiener has said his bill aims to help combat veterans dealing with trauma. In October, an Alaska Airlines pilot told investigators he was taking mushrooms when he tried to bring down a San Francisco-bound airplane.
Two days before the New Year’s Eve incident, Supinski “received a double dose of his medication” for PTSD, his attorney told the judge. It was unclear what that medication was or how he received it. It was also unclear how Supinksi obtained the mushrooms.
“But on the morning of December 31, at approximately 10:30 in the morning Mr. Supinski consumed three large psilocybin mushrooms. So that by 11:30 a.m., he was hallucinating. He was delusional,” Young told the court.
Supinski’s landlord, Daniel Grogg, testified that Supinski’s wife told him over text message that “her husband ate a lot of mushrooms, and she was worried because he was making death fantasies,” according to court documents. Grogg, who lives above them and identified himself in court as a former military police officer, said he offered to try to help.
“As soon as I stepped in … he started yelling profanities at me to get the F out of his house,” Grogg told the court. The wife then “brought the baby up and asked (my family) to hold the baby while she went back down to talk to him.”
Supinski’s wife, Debora Supinski, testified that her husband retrieved the gun during the brief time she was asking the landlord to watch the baby.
“Unfortunately, when I went upstairs with the baby, that’s when Evan took the gun,” Debora Supinski testified. “He was alone in the house. I could not stop him.”
Supinski “removed all his clothing and tried to convince his wife to remove her clothing because they were in the Garden of Eden,” attorney Young told the court. “He went out into the middle of the street and was encountering people, telling people that he loved them, believed the heavens were opening and other delusional things showing an extreme state of unconsciousness.”
Grogg testified that after taking in the baby, he next saw Supinski naked in the backyard, and moments later, in the street with a gun.
“He was shooting shots out front into my car with the intention of drawing me outside,” Grogg testified. “He was yelling for me to come outside so he could kill me. He shot rounds into my neighbor’s car two houses away. … He was calling me Satan.”
According to Grogg, Debora Supinski later that day told him that Supinski “was having fantasies of killing his family and committing suicide so they could go to heaven and see God.”
“It is my true belief that if I had not intervened, they would have all been dead,” Grogg told the court.
Debora Supinski testified that she convinced her husband to put down the gun and pray.
“And from that moment on, when I took that gun from him, he completely changed,” she told the court. “Now he was telling all neighbors around that he loved them … that we all were going to go to heaven because, you know, it was the apocalypse.”
Police officers responded to 41st Avenue after residents called 911 shortly before noon. The exterior of one home had been hit by a bullet that struck the stucco between two panes of glass in a picture window, while at least two cars were damaged by bullets. Prosecutors allege Supinski fired four shots from the unregistered gun.
Young said that Supinksi “was jibbering and speaking nonsense” when police arrived.
Young, in urging the judge to release Supinski, said she believed his actions were “an interaction between his medication, the increased dosage of his medication and his overconsumption of psilocybin.”
Debora Supinski also blamed the mushrooms and told the judge she had not witnessed anything similar during their eight years as a couple.
“I know that in that moment, it was not him, and that it was something going on in his mind due to the mushrooms, probably due to his medication that he was taking, compounded by his PTSD history,” she testified.
Grogg urged the judge not to release Supinski, saying he feared for his family’s safety.
“I understand PTSD and mushrooms are a terrible cocktail, terrible combination,” he said in court. “But as was expressed, this was a choice he made: a loaded gun in his house and a 5-month-old baby.”
The judge called the decision “a difficult one” and said she had “given considerable thought” to the question of whether Supinski still posed a threat to public safety following what she called “a bad trip.”
“It is clear that the defendant was suffering from a psychotic break from the result most likely of taking the psilocybin,” Caffese said, according to court records.
Caffese said she weighed Supinski’s history of service in Afghanistan as a member of the Marines and noted that he had no prior criminal record. She released him to Fresh Start with electronic ankle monitoring and ordered that he participate in rehabilitation services and provide weekly urine tests.
Supinski is due back in court on Tuesday to determine whether his case can be sent to San Francisco’s Veterans Justice Court, a specialized court for veterans facing criminal charges.