Brother: Walmart attack suspect a danger for years, ‘fell through cracks every time’

• The family of the man held in the stabbing of 11 people at a Traverse City area Walmart had sought help for nearly three decades
• Bradford Gille, who has a history of mental illness, was arraigned Monday on one count of felony terrorism and 11 counts of assault with intent to murder
• Michigan ranks far below national standards in available psychiatric beds 

The family of a homeless man with mental issues accused of stabbing 11 people at a Walmart near Traverse City on Saturday say they’ve begged authorities to institutionalize him for decades.

The man’s brother, Shane Gille, said he yelled at law enforcement officers who arrived at his Pellston home on Sunday to tell him his brother was in custody. 

“I laid into them,” Gille told Bridge Michigan. “We've been throwing flags for the last 28 years that he needs a kind of placement.”

“Things need to change,” he continued, adding that his family offers “condolences to the families and the victims that have had to endure this. This is a completely tragic incident that was completely preventable.”

His brother, Bradford Gille, 42, was arraigned Monday in a Grand Traverse County court on one count of felony terrorism and 11 counts of assault with intent to murder. The victims are expected to recover. 

Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Noelle Moeggenberg recounted Gille’s criminal history during the hearing, including two prior assault convictions and at least one conviction for malicious destruction of property.  

“He does, unfortunately, have a history of mental illness including prior involuntary hospitalizations,” she said.

Among other things, court records indicate the man tried to dig up a grave in Petoskey, threatened to kill others and told a psychiatrist he was the Antichrist, according to The Detroit News.

Related:

• Terrorism, assault charges sought in Traverse City Walmart knife attack, police ID suspect
• Michigan psychiatric centers cut number of beds despite having more money
• As child mental health rates rise, Michigan sharply cuts residential beds
• In Michigan mental health crisis, a tug-of-war over too few social workers

Despite the warnings, Bradford Gille was free to walk into Walmart in Garfield Township and begin randomly stabbing people with a folding knife.

The rampage ended when a group of shoppers, including one who was legally carrying a gun, confronted and subdued Bradford Gille.

As Bridge has reported, advocates have long lamented the state’s threadbare mental health system — a network hobbled by a deep shortage in workers, including psychiatrists and social workers. Those shortages have dramatically reduced the number of beds in residential treatment over the years, for both adults and children in crisis.

“The Walmart stabbings, to me, is all about mental health crisis,” said Tom Bousamra, a Catholic deacon who chaplains at the Grand Traverse County jail and co-founded the non-profit organization, Before, During, and After Incarceration.

“This fella needed help. He wasn't getting it, and it's partially because he's in denial.”

‘An absolute nightmare’

Shane Gille told Bridge that his family has been plagued by his brother’s mental illness since he was in high school.

At 15, Bradford Gille was pranked into smoking marijuana laced with dextromethorphan, sold under the brand name Robitussin, by some of his high-school classmates in Pellston, according to his brother. 

The resulting “brain fry” never ended, Shane Gille said.

“At that point, he lost his life,” he said.

Bradford Gille was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia shortly thereafter and would spend nearly three decades bouncing in and out of hospitals and jails.

“We'll get a phone call that he's running down the highway naked over in Pennsylvania,” Shane said. “Next thing we know, he’s in Florida.” 

Shane Gille, a 48-year-old commercial vehicle operator in Pellston, believes his younger brother “fell through the cracks every time,” enabled by disability checks that gave him money that enabled him to purchase drugs and alcohol but never required him to receive proper, long-term support.

“It's been an absolute nightmare trying to take care of him,” he said.

Gille achieved a degree of stability in a Rogers City group home in 2020, according to Shane, where he “had a good thing going” staying consistent with medication.

But Shane was surprised to see his brother return to Pellston earlier this year, saying “he looked completely homeless.” Attempts at further outreach were unsuccessful. Their most recent interaction was earlier this month in Petoskey.

“It's a dissociative kind of illness,” Shane said. “There's a certain point where it's like, what can we do … we’ve tried everything.”

At Monday’s arraignment, Bradford Gille sparred with a magistrate and his public defender.

“Y’all have the tobacco company and you’re selling cigarettes with fiberglass and chemicals in ‘em just to kill off the population,” Gille said, unprompted.

“And you can’t really accuse me of anything if you’re doing that.”

At another point, he explained that he “saw a black-and-white video on the internet about psychotropic drugs.” When his attorney interrupted him, he responded, “Don't cut me off.”

5 psych beds, 100,000 residents

State Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, called the incident “one of the worst stories I’ve ever heard.”

“We need to do so much more to address the mental health crisis in our state,” Damoose said in a Facebook post. “That means funding, strategy…everything. This weekend’s attack is heartbreaking all around — surely for the victims and their families but also in terms of failing to provide the care we need for those with mental health challenges. And, let’s not overlook the drug use side of this case that too often people don’t want to talk about.”

Kate Dahlstrom, board president for the Grand Traverse branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), said a long-term fix for chronically ill patients is lacking in Michigan, which closed several of its psychiatric hospitals in the 1990s.

“It's not unreasonable for us to keep those people hospitalized for the safety of the public good,” she said.

One report found that — despite more than 1 in 5 Michigan adults that experience mental illness, nearly half (49.4%) did not receive treatment in 2019. Moreover, nearly 1 in 4 of the some 650,000 Michiganders with substance use disorder did not receive care, according to the 2022 report by the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, a nonprofit focused on reducing costs and expanding access to Michigan’s health care providers.

Michigan would need another 226 psychiatrists to meet its need, the healthcare research nonprofit, KFF, reported in 2023.

As of 2023, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services operated five psychiatric hospitals serving about 650 patients.

Five state-operated psychiatric beds per 100,000 residents is far below national standards for adequate mental health coverage. The Treatment Advocacy Center ranks Michigan 46th in the country for its number of beds.

In the mid-1950s, when Michigan had nearly 22,000 patients in public mental hospitals, Dahlstrom said people like Gille may have been institutionalized for years.

“You need that kind of time to introduce new medications or change the potency, and then work on actual talk therapy and all these other things,” Dahlstrom said. “Especially if they don't have a good support group in the community. Not everyone has a real supporting family to go back to. In fact, it can be just the opposite. It can cause trauma and additional anxiety.”

Recounting his attempts to rehabilitate those coming into the jail system from the Traverse City homeless encampment known as the Pines, Bousamra believes multiple attempts at intervention are needed to affect change.

“The problems with folks are ongoing and chronic,” Bousamra said. “They struggled with these things all their life, so three days in a psychiatric ward of a hospital, or a week even, is not going to solve a problem.”

Bridge senior reporter Robin Erb contributed to this story.