Michigan officials demand answers over gunman’s weapons probation
Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, said on Tuesday she was demanding answers about the probation served by a gunman who killed himself after shooting dead three students and wounding five others in a mass shooting at Michigan State University on Monday night.
Anthony McRae, 43, served the probation after admitting to possession of a concealed weapon without a permit in 2019.
Originally charged with a felony in that case, McRae pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in exchange for a year and a half on probation, during which he was not allowed to possess a weapon.
Some reports have said the weapons ban expired with the end of McRae’s probation in 2021. But Nessel questioned that in an interview with CNN.
“We know that he had his probation extended a couple of times,” she said. “I’m not sure why, and I’d like to know that.”
Nessel went on to assert: “We know that the gun that [McRae] was carrying, he was obviously carrying illegally. He was a convicted felon. It’s a crime for him to even possess that weapon. How did he get it? I’d like to know that.
“So there’s a lot of unanswered questions. And we’re going to be digging deep into this to find out.”
Meanwhile, McRae was being described on Monday as an aggressive, socially awkward loner.
He fought often with his parents and would frequently leave home to spend time in homeless shelters in other cities, according to his sister Melinda McRae, who spoke to CNN on Tuesday.
“He’s always been like the oddball of the family,” McRae’s sister told the network. “But he’s been taken care of. My parents took care of us.”
Her brother, she added, was unemployed and had recently been living an isolated existence in a room at his father’s house.
Michael McRae said his son became angry and reclusive after his mother’s death in 2020. “My son began to change,” he told CNN. “He was getting more and more bitter. Angry and bitter. So angry. Evil and angry. He began to really let himself go. His teeth were falling out. He stopped cutting his hair. He looked like a wolf man.”
A neighbor told the Detroit News that there was “constant trouble” at the McRae residence and heard what he believed was gunshot target practice there last summer.
“I told my dad it was a semi-automatic pistol,” Paul Tucker said. “Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. It wasn’t firecrackers.”
At a press conference on Tuesday morning, the interim deputy chief of Michigan State’s campus police department, Chris Rozman, said McRae had no affiliation with the university, and officials had “absolutely no idea” what the motive for the shooting was.
The Township of Ewing police department in New Jersey said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that a note found in McRae’s pocket after the Michigan State shooting contained a threat against two schools in the district, to which he had ties.
The post said all public schools in Ewing had closed for the day out of “an abundance of caution”.
CNN quoted a source “close to the investigation” who said a two-page note was found on McRae’s body referencing other recent mass shootings in the US and allegedly stating his desire to “finish off Lansing”, which is Michigan’s capital and neighbors East Lansing, the home of Michigan State.