N.Y. Times
Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who had drifted between friends and family members for most of his short life, alienating most of them and failing at almost anything that he tried, decided to come home on Saturday. He boarded a bus in Baltimore, arrived in Midtown Manhattan just before 11 a.m., and then disappeared onto the N train at the Times Square subway stop.
He was bound for Brooklyn, where he had been born 28 years before, carrying the silver Taurus 9-millimeter pistol he had used earlier to shoot his ex-girlfriend.
He had a plan, which he soon shared with the world via Instagram: He wanted to kill two police officers.
What exactly pushed Mr. Brinsley to fatally shoot two police officers before shooting himself is not clear. But by Sunday evening, several things had become obvious. He had an extensive history with the police, having been arrested 20 times — mainly for petty crimes like stealing condoms from a Rite Aid drugstore in Ohio. He spent two years in prison after firing a stolen gun near a public street in Georgia.
Mr. Brinsley had also suffered from mental problems. Relatives told the police he had taken medication at one point, and when he was asked during an August 2011 court hearing if he had ever been a patient in a mental institution or under the care of a psychiatrist or psychologist, he said yes. He had also tried to hang himself a year ago, the police said.
By this year, Mr. Brinsley had become isolated. He was estranged from his family. His on-again, off-again relationship with Shaneka Thompson, 29, who works for the Maryland Department of Welfare and serves in the Air Force Reserve, was off again. By Saturday, he had seized on the deaths at the hands of police officers of Eric Garner on Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., focusing his rage against the authorities. In his short life, during which Mr. Brinsley failed to finish high school, to hold a steady job or, seemingly, to commit even the smallest crime without being caught, thoughts of revenge seemed to be the one thing giving him purpose.
“Most of his postings and rants are on the Instagram account, and what we’re seeing from this right now is anger against the government,” Robert K. Boyce, the Police Department’s chief of detectives... Mr. Brinsley’s mother, who lives in Brooklyn, told the police she feared her son and had not seen him in a month. She said “he had a very troubled childhood and was often violent,” Chief Boyce said.