#Gunman who killed 3 #MSU students & critically injured 5 before killing himself lied about having a #firearm inside their house & firing the #gun in his backyard.
Michael McRae, father of #AnthonyDwayneMcRae, said his son had bought a gun sometime after he was #arrested in 2019 on a #WeaponsViolation.
#MassShooting #GunCulture #AmericanGunObsession #GunControl #RedFlagLaws #UniversalBackgroundChecks
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/02/13/michigan-state-university-shooting/
When the father confronted the son about gunshots he heard in his backyard, he said, Anthony McRae told him it was fireworks, even after Michael McRae saw bullet casings on the grass.
“I told him to get rid of the gun,” the 66-year-old father told The Post. “He kept lying to me about it and told me he got rid of it.”
The father said his 43-year-old son had struggled in the 2+ years after Linda McRae, Anthony’s mother, died of a stroke in 2020.
Michael McRae noted how his son was “grieving & crying a lot” & “stayed in his room like a turtle” for hours at a time whenever he was home.
“He never let me in the room to show me the gun,” the father said. “If he showed it to me, I would have put it in the garbage.”
Michael McRae noted that his son was “depressed & overly stressed out” due to his mother’s death & not working for months.
He offered his apologies to the families of the victims, adding that he hoped they could one day “forgive my son for what he’s done.”
“He was a mama’s boy, & he never really got over that his mom was gone,” the father told The Post. “I could see that he was changing, but I never thought in my life that he would do something crazy like this.”
He added: “It feels like I’m dreaming. It doesn’t seem real.”
Nonilex