PENUELAS, Puerto Rico: The brother of a man accused of killing five people at a Florida airport questioned Saturday why his brother was allowed to keep his gun after U.S. authorities knew he’d become increasingly paranoid and was hearing voices.
Esteban Santiago, 26, had trouble controlling his anger after serving in Iraq and told his brother that he felt he was being chased and controlled by the CIA through secret online messages. When he told agents at an FBI field office his paranoid thoughts in November, he was evaluated for four days, then released without any follow-up medication or therapy.
“The FBI failed there,” Bryan Santiago told the Associated Press. “We’re not talking about someone who emerged from anonymity to do something like this.”
Speaking in Spanish outside his family’s house in Penuelas, the brother said: “The federal government already knew about this for months, they had been evaluating him for a while, but they didn’t do anything.”
Bryan Santiago said he noted that his brother was behaving differently when he returned from Iraq.
“He sometimes couldn’t control his anger,” he said. “You could tell something had changed.”
Bryan Santiago said that when he went to visit his brother in Alaska last August, he said Santiago told him he was hearing voices and felt he was being chased.
Authorities in Alaska on Saturday defended their interactions with Esteban Santiago. FBI Special Agent in Charge Marlin Ritzman told a news conference that Santiago broke no laws when he walked into the Anchorage FBI office “making disjointed comments about mind control.” He characterized Santiago as a “walk-in complaint,” which he said offices around the country receive daily.
Anchorage police were called to the office by the agency, told Santiago he was having “terroristic thoughts” and believed he was being influenced by the so-called Islamic State group and was taken to a mental health facility, city Police Chief Chris Tolley said. Santiago had left a gun and his newborn child in his vehicle when he went to the FBI office. Police held the gun until Santiago was released and contacted him about picking up the weapon, which he did on Dec. 8, Tolley said.
Authorities would not confirm whether he used the same gun Friday.
Despite his mental evaluation, U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler said Santiago would have been able to legally possess a gun because he had not been judged mentally ill, which is a high standard.
In recent years, Esteban Santiago — a new dad — had been living in Anchorage. But there were signs of trouble.
He was charged in a domestic violence case in January 2016, damaging a door when he forced his way into a bathroom at his girlfriend’s Anchorage home. The woman told officers he yelled at her to leave, choked her and smacked her on the side of the head, according to charging documents.
Tolley detailed other complaints of physical disturbances last year involving Santiago but said officers either found no probable cause for arrest or were told by the city prosecutor not to arrest him.
Esteban Santiago was born in New Jersey but moved to Puerto Rico when he was 2, his brother said. He grew up in Penuelas before joining the Guard in 2007.