Navy Yard shooting suspect, Aaron Alexis, suffered a host of mental health issues, including paranoia, a sleep disorder and hearing voices in his head.
Aaron Alexis seems a study in contradictions: a former Navy reservist, a Defense Department contractor, a convert to Buddhism who was taking an online course in aeronautics. But he also had flashes of temper that led to run-ins with police over shootings in Seattle and Fort Worth, Texas.
A profile began to emerge of the man authorities identified as the gunman in a mass shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., that left 13 people dead, including the 34-year-old man.
While some neighbours and acquaintances described him as “nice,” his father once told detectives in Seattle that his son had anger management problems related to post-traumatic stress brought on by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
He also complained about the Navy and being a victim of discrimination.
U.S. law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that Alexis had been suffering a host of serious mental issues, including paranoia and a sleep disorder.
He also had been hearing voices in his head, the officials said. Alexis had been treated since August by the Veterans Administration for his mental problems, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the criminal investigation in the case was continuing.
The officials also said there has been no connection to international or domestic terrorism, and investigators have found no manifesto or other writings suggesting a political or religious motivation.
The Navy had not declared him mentally unfit, which would have rescinded a security clearance Alexis had from his earlier time in the Navy Reserves.
U.S. officials say Alexis had a string of misconduct problems during his nearly three years in the military, but he received an honorable discharge.
The officials say he had incidents of insubordination and disorderly conduct and was sometimes absent from work without authorization. The offenses occurred mainly when he was serving in Texas from 2008 to 2011 and were enough to prompt Navy officials to grant him an early discharge through a special program for enlisted personnel.
Officials said the bad conduct was enough to make it clear Alexis would not be a good sailor, but not enough to warrant a general or less-than-honourable discharge.
Family members told investigators that Alexis was being treated for his mental health issues.
At the time of the shootings, he worked for The Experts, a subcontractor on an HP Enterprise Services contract to refresh equipment used on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet network.
His life over the past decade has been checkered.
Alexis lived in Seattle in 2004 and 2005, according to public documents.
In 2004, Seattle police said Alexis was arrested for shooting out the tires of another man’s vehicle in what he later described to detectives as an anger-fueled “blackout.” According to an account on the department’s website, two construction workers had parked their Honda Accord in the driveway of their worksite, next to a home where Alexis was staying.
The workers reported seeing a man, later identified by police as Alexis, walk out of the home next to their worksite, pull a gun from his waistband and fire three shots into the rear tires of their Honda before he walked slowly back to his home.
When detectives interviewed workers at the construction site, they told police Alexis had stared at construction workers at the job site daily for several weeks prior to the shooting.
The owner of the construction business told police he believed Alexis was angry over the parking situation around the site.
Police eventually arrested Alexis, searched his home, found a gun and ammunition in his room, and booked him into the King County Jail for malicious mischief.
According to the police account, Alexis told detectives he perceived he had been “mocked” by construction workers the morning of the incident.
Alexis also claimed he had an anger-fueled “blackout,” and could not remember firing his gun at the Honda until an hour after the incident.
Alexis also told police he was present during “the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001” and described “how those events had disturbed him.”
Then, on May 5, 2007, he enlisted in the Navy reserves, serving through 2011, according to Navy spokeswoman Lt. Megan Shutka.
Shutka said he received the National Defense Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal during his stint in the reserves.
Both are medals issued to large numbers of service members who served abroad and in the United States since the 9/11 attacks. Alexis’ last assignment was as aviation electricians mate 3rd class at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth, Shutka said.
It was while he was still in the reserves that a neighbour in Fort Worth reported she had been nearly struck by a bullet shot from his downstairs apartment.
In September 2010, Fort Worth police questioned Alexis about the neighbour’s report.
He admitted to firing his weapon but said he was cleaning his gun when it accidentally discharged. He said he did not call the police because he didn’t think the bullet went through to the other apartment.
The neighbour told police she was scared of Alexis and felt he fired intentionally because he had complained about her making too much noise.
Alexis was arrested on suspicion of discharging a firearm within city limits but Tarrant County district attorney’s spokeswoman Melody McDonald Lanier said the case was not pursued after it was determined the gun discharged accidentally.
After leaving the reserves, Alexis worked as a waiter and delivery driver at the Happy Bowl Thai restaurant in White Settlement, a suburb of Fort Worth, according to Afton Bradley, a former co-worker.
The two overlapped for about eight months before Alexis left in May, Bradley said.
Having traveled to Thailand, Alexis learned some Thai and could speak to Thai customers in their native language.
“He was a very nice person,” Bradley said in a phone interview. “It kind of blows my mind away. I wouldn’t think anything bad at all.”
A former acquaintance, Oui Suthametewakul, said Alexis lived with him and his wife from August 2012 to May 2013 in Fort Worth, but that they had to part ways because he wasn’t paying his bills.
Alexis was a “nice guy,” Suthametewakul said, though he sometimes carried a gun and would frequently complain about being the victim of discrimination.
Suthametewakul said Alexis had converted to Buddhism and prayed at a local Buddhist temple.
“We are all shocked. We are non violent. Aaron was a very good practitioner of Buddhism. He could chant better than even some of the Thai congregants,” said Ty Thairintr, a congregant at Wat Budsaya, a Buddhist temple in Fort Worth.
Thairintr said Alexis told him he was upset with the Navy because “he thought he never got a promotion because of the color of his skin. He hated his commander.”
As Thairintr and others at the temple understood, Alexis took a job as a contractor and he indicated to them he was going to go to Virginia.
He last saw him five weeks ago.
“He was a very devoted Buddhist. There was no tell-tale sign of this behavior,” Thairintr said.
In the early 2000s, before he moved to Seattle, Alexis lived with his mother in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., said Gene Demby, of Philadelphia, who said he dated one of Alexis’ younger sisters at the time.
He said Alexis and his two younger sisters had a difficult relationship with their father, who divorced their mother in the mid-1990s.
“I wouldn’t call him nice, but he seemed harmless, if really awkward,” said Demby, the lead writer for NPR’s Code Switch blog about race and culture. “He was insecure. He was like a barbershop conspiracy theorist, the kind of guy who believes he’s smarter than everyone else. He also was kind of like perpetually aggrieved, but not megalomaniacal or delusional.”
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which offers online courses in aviation and aerospace, confirmed that Alexis was enrolled as an online student via its Fort Worth campus, started classes in July 2012 and was pursuing a bachelor’s of science in aeronautics.
“We are cooperating fully with investigating officials,” the university said.
A dozen people died in the shooting rampage Monday at the Washington Navy Yard.
It was the deadliest attack at a domestic military installation since November 2009, when an Army psychiatrist killed 13 people and wounded 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas.
Early Tuesday, the stories of some of those who died started to surface.
Michael Arnold, 59, of Lorton, Va., was a Navy veteran and avid pilot who was building a light airplane at his home, said his uncle, Steve Hunter.
“It would have been the first plane he ever owned,” Hunter said in a telephone interview from Rochester, Mich., Arnold’s hometown. “It’s partially assembled in his basement.”
Hunter said his nephew retired from the Navy as a commander or lieutenant commander and had previously been stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
He worked at the Navy Yard on a team that designed vessels such as the USS Makin Island, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship used by the Marine Corps.
Arnold and his wife, Jolanda, had been married for more than 30 years, Hunter said.
They had two grown sons, Eric and Christopher.
Hunter said Arnold returned to Michigan for Labour Day to visit his 80-year-old mother, Patricia.
“He was a loving son of his mother and his wife, and great father to his kids,” said Hunter. “It’s tragic. How can you get up in the morning and go to work and have that happen? How do bad things like that happen to good people?”
Sylvia Frasier, 53, had worked at Naval Sea Systems Command as an information assurance manager since 2000, according to a LinkedIn profile in her name.
Frasier studied at Strayer University, earning a bachelor of science in computer information systems in 2000 and a master’s in information systems in 2002. Her duties at NAVSEA included providing policy and guidance on network security, and assuring that all computer systems operated by the headquarters met Department of Navy and Department of Defense requirements.
She also led efforts “to establish and implement procedures to investigate security violations or incidents,” according to the profile.
Her brother, James Frasier, declined comment Monday night.
Kathleen Gaarde, 63, of Woodbridge, Va., was a financial analyst who supported the organization responsible for the shipyards, her husband, Douglass, wrote in an email to the AP early Tuesday.
Douglass Gaarde declined to speak, but wrote that he was unable to sleep.
“Today my life partner of 42 years (38 of them married) was taken from me, my grown son and daughter, and friends,” he wrote. “We were just starting to plan our retirement activities and now none of that matters. It hasn’t fully sunk in yet but I know I already dearly miss her.”
Madelyn Gaarde, of Grand Junction, Colo., who’s married to Douglass Gaarde’s brother, said her sister- and brother-in-law met while he was studying electrical engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Douglass Gaarde, an Illinois native, also worked for the Navy until his retirement last year, his sister-in-law said.
“She was a very gracious person and very welcoming,” she said of Kathleen Gaarde.
Kenneth Proctor, 46, worked as a civilian utilities foreman at the Navy Yard, his ex-wife, Evelyn Proctor, said. He spent 22 years working for the federal government, she added.
The Waldorf, Md., woman spoke to Kenneth early Monday morning before he left for work at the Navy Yard. It was his regular call. The high school sweethearts talked every day, even after they divorced this year after 19 years of marriage, and they shared custody of their two teenage sons.
She was in shock about his death.
“He just went in there in the morning for breakfast,” Proctor said Monday night of the building where the shooting took place. “He didn’t even work in the building. It was a routine thing for him to go there in the morning for breakfast, and unfortunately, it happened.”
Proctor said she tried to call her ex-husband throughout the day and drove to the Navy Yard on Monday afternoon, fearing the worst. After waiting for about three hours alongside other relatives concerned about their loved ones, she was informed around 8 p.m. that he was among the dead. Officials did not detail the circumstances of his shooting, she said.
The Proctors married in 1994 and divorced this year. Their older son, Kenneth Proctor Jr., 17, enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school this spring and is in basic training in Oklahoma. Their younger son, Kendull Proctor, is 15.
“We were still very close. It wasn’t a bitter divorce,” Evelyn Proctor said. “We still talked every day, and we lived 10 minutes away from each other.”
Kenneth Proctor was born and raised in Charles County, Md., where he lived until his death.
“He loved the Redskins. Loved his kids — a very loving, caring, gentle person. His kids meant a lot to him,” Evelyn Proctor said.
