What We Know About the Gunman Behind the Michigan State Attack

The man who police say shot and killed three students and left five more critically wounded at Michigan State University on Monday lived with his father on a quiet dead-end street in Lansing, Michigan, and had become increasingly angry and bitter since his mother’s death in September 2020 after a long illness, the father said.

The gunman, Anthony Dwayne McRae, 43, rarely left his bedroom, his father, Michael McRae, 67, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I told him, ‘You’re looking like kind of a wolfman.’”

Michael McRae said his son had lived briefly in a homeless shelter in Cincinnati. He had never been diagnosed with a mental health problem and was not on medication, the father said, although neighbors in Michigan regarded him as an eccentric. He did not have a car and was often seen walking to and from his father’s house.

Authorities said the gunman, who took his own life after the campus shootings, had no apparent connection with Michigan State University, and his motive remained murky Tuesday.

A note found in his pocket after his death suggested that he had threatened two public schools in Ewing Township, New Jersey, just outside Trenton. Police in Ewing Township said in a statement that Anthony McRae had ties to their community and “a history of mental illness,” without elaborating.

Anthony McRae also had a history of possessing and carrying firearms. Neighbors said he alarmed them in the summer when he fired a gun in his father’s backyard.

He was arrested June 7, 2019, on a charge of carrying a concealed pistol without a permit, a felony in Michigan. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of possessing a loaded firearm, and was sentenced to a year and a half of probation, which he finished in May 2021.

In the 2019 incident, he was taken into custody after a police officer stopped him near an abandoned building on East Street in Lansing around 1:30 a.m., a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Corrections, Chris Gautz, said in an email.

McRae told the officer that he had just walked to a store to buy cigarettes, Gautz said. When asked, McRae admitted that he had a loaded Ruger pistol on him and did not have a concealed weapons permit. He told the officer he carried the gun because he feared for his safety.

As part of his plea agreement in October 2019, he agreed to give up his firearm. It remained unclear Tuesday afternoon when or where he had obtained the weapon he used in the attack on campus.

The gunman had roots in and around Trenton, where his mother, Linda G. Goldware, was born and his parents met, according to an online obituary for Goldware. He had a brother and a sister.

Anthony McRae’s uncle, Luther James McRae Jr., recalled his nephew as an inquisitive and happy child who attended schools in Ewing before moving out of state. He said his nephew later had brushes with the law that should have raised alarm bells, although he declined to give details. “This should have been addressed long ago,” he said.

The gunman’s father, a retired autoworker known as a generous neighbor, said his son’s mental state had deteriorated in recent years. He spent long stretches of time in his bedroom playing video games and rejected his father’s entreaties to talk, attend church or go fishing.

“He kind of started tripping out, bugging out,” Michael McRae said. “He kept changing — getting kind of bitter.”

Michael McRae said police had seized several guns from his son in the past. He said he was not aware that his son had obtained a new weapon before the shooting.

His son was not home when Michael McRae came home from work Monday afternoon, he said. A few hours later, he got a call from a neighbor who had seen Anthony McRae’s photo in a police bulletin on television.

“One of my neighbors called me and said, ‘That was your son who did that,’” Michael McRae said. Soon after, he said police called him from outside the front gate of his home and instructed him to open the door. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.