Former Cornell Student With Weapons Stockpile Will Be Evaluated

ITHACA, N.Y. — With images of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting still fresh, a federal judge Monday ordered that a former Cornell University student undergo a psychiatric examination after authorities found a military-style rifle, a homemade bomb and other tactical equipment in his apartment, blocks from the Ivy League campus.

The FBI and the local police are still investigating the former student, Maximilien R. Reynolds, 20, and what he planned to do with his weapons — if he planned to do anything with them at all.

A Walmart employee called the police after Reynolds purchased ammunition, knives and other tools the employee deemed suspicious, and the tip led authorities to raid Reynolds’ studio apartment in the Collegetown neighborhood on March 7.

Inside, the police found a wide array of weapons and survival gear that left them stunned: an AR-15-style rifle, a shrapnel bomb fashioned from a firework, more than 300 rounds of ammunition for various guns, a bulletproof vest, a homemade silencer, trauma supplies and food rations.

“Collectively all of these items certainly suggest a specific recipe for large-scale destruction,” said Peter Tyler, Ithaca’s police chief, who praised the work of local and federal investigators.

Reynolds had been on leave from Cornell since after the 2016 fall semester and was taking classes at a local community college. After the raid on his apartment, Reynolds voluntarily sought treatment at a hospital. He was arrested and charged Thursday. At a hearing Friday, his lawyer, Raymond M. Schlather, said in court that Reynolds had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder with paranoid features, according to the Cornell Daily Sun, the campus newspaper.

The government has charged Reynolds with four federal crimes: possessing a silencer, owning an explosive device and providing two false statements in the process of paying a friend to purchase the rifle for him. He will remain in custody while he undergoes the examination to determine if he is competent to stand trial. Each of the four charges carries a maximum of up to 10 years in prison.

AR-15-style rifles have been used in several high-profile school shootings, but Reynolds’ friends said the former student feared those very attacks and may have acquired the weapons to protect himself and those he knew.

Reynolds’ lawyer said his client “is ill” and that preliminary indications show “that there were no targets, that there were no plans, and that the materials and conduct at issue were defensive in nature, arising out of his medical condition.”

The student paper quoted Schlather as saying that Reynolds is driven by “a huge paranoia of the world beyond him and protecting himself from that world.”

Edwin Kye, a close friend of Reynolds’ and a Cornell student, said Reynolds harbored fears that someone would attack him, his family or his friends.

“One of the things he was afraid of was a potential school shooting or another incident like that on campus,” Kye said in an interview. “I think part of the reason he accumulated what he had was to prepare himself in the event of any sort of shooting.”

Kye said he wrote off Reynolds’ behavior as excessively cautious or a result of his bipolar diagnosis and “never thought it would be taken to the extreme.”

Other students said the raid has made them question how safe they are in Ithaca, which many consider a bubble from the outside world, and forced them to confront the national debate over gun control and mental health.

“I was shocked to hear about it,” said Grace Yuan, who lives on the same floor as Reynolds, just a few doors down. “I thought that Collegetown was very safe.”

Yuan said her parents, who live in Hong Kong, were worried about the possibility of a mass shooting when she applied to colleges in the United States, a fear echoed by international students in the campus newspaper.

“I’m really relieved that someone spoke up about it,” Yuan said. “It’s terrifying to imagine any alternative outcome.”