The suspect who allegedly injured 11 people with a knife at a Michigan Walmart on Saturday is a mentally unwell homeless man with a string of charges on his record going back decades, according to local authorities and court records.
Police in Emmet County, Michigan, were searching for Bradford James Gille, 42, due to a court order for his arrest but did not find him until the alleged stabbing spree in a neighboring county, the Emmet County Sheriff’s Office said in a Sunday statement. Gille was charged with felony and violent crimes several times in Emmet County alone since 2002, but had many dismissed for reasons such as his poor mental health, court documents show.
Gille’s most recent charges in Emmet County — disinterment and mutilation of dead bodies and malicious destruction of tombs and memorials — could have brought up to 15 years in prison combined, but a court dismissed them in 2017 after he pleaded not guilty “by reason of insanity,” court records show. The court issued a commitment order following a not guilty verdict, sending him to a state-run psychiatric hospital in Saline for a period of no more than 60 days, The Detroit Free Press reported; Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the Saline hospital, did not respond to a request for comment.
Bradford Gille Gravesite Case by Hudson Crozier on Scribd
A police affidavit alleged that Gille was found digging up a grave and overturning grave stones in April 2016 because he thought people were “buried alive,” according to The Detroit Free Press. Gille’s mother said as early as 2007 that her son had previously been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the paper reported.
Gille’s attorney in the gravesite case did not respond to a request for comment. Court records do not yet list an attorney for Gille’s current case.
A prosecutor said at Gille’s Monday arraignment that he has “two prior assaultive convictions” and a history of involuntary hospitalizations due to mental illness, without specifying where or when those incidents occurred. Gille was also charged with a drug offense in Emmet County as early as 2006, but it was dismissed. Gille’s encounters with law enforcement even extended to Florida, multiple outlets reported, citing court records.
The Emmet County Sheriff’s Office said police were looking to arrest Gille due to a court order that described Gille as homeless within 24 hours of his arrest on Saturday. The sheriff’s office did not say why the court order was issued and did not respond to a request for comment.
Gille is now charged with terrorism and 11 counts of assault with intent to murder. Multiple individuals in the Walmart parking lot confronted the suspect, including one with a pistol, and stopped him from harming more people, authorities said. Officials have not determined a motive for the attack.
The case highlights America’s growing homelessness problem, with Michigan seeing an 8% increase in its homeless population between 2020 and 2023 despite spending millions of dollars to improve the situation, according to the latest state data.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on July 24 with a variety of directives aimed at encouraging the hospitalization of mentally ill homeless individuals and scrutiny against behavior such as open drug use and loitering. The order declared that so-called “housing first” policies favored by Democrats “deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency.”
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