The man believed to have killed three Michigan State University students and injured five others in a mass shooting Monday night was a "good kid" who turned "evil and mean" after his mother died from a stroke in September 2020, his father says. Michael McRae tells NBC News that 43-year-old Anthony McRae quit his job in a warehouse and became reclusive after his mother's death. "He was grieving his mom. He wouldn’t let it go. He got bitter, bitter, and bitter," Michael McRae says. "His mom died, and he just started getting evil and mean. He didn’t care about anything anymore." He says he encouraged his son to seek counseling and apply for jobs, but he just stayed in his room at their Lansing, Michigan home playing video games.
McRae had been in trouble with the law before his mother's death, the Detroit News reports. According to court records, he was charged in June 2019 with carrying a concealed pistol without a concealed carry permit, a felony. A misdemeanor charge of possession of a loaded firearm was added in October that year. The felony charge was dismissed after McRae agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge. He ended up spending 18 months on probation, which ended in May 2021. He was banned from having a weapon "of any type" while on probation.
His father tells NBC that he told his son, "We don’t need no guns in this house." He says his son claimed he had gotten rid of it. But neighbors complained over the summer that Anthony McRae had been firing shots from his back door at a target in the yard. Police say McRae, who was never a student or an employee at MSU, killed himself miles from campus as officers closed in on him. The motive is still a mystery. His father said he never thought his son was a danger to others. "He wasn't like that," he says. "He was no danger to nobody like that. He never did anything crazy like this." (More Michigan State University stories.)
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