He’d just gotten to the mental health facility, but Tevin McDonald decided he wanted to leave.
Prosecutors say staff were searching McDonald as part of his check-in to Smyrna's Ridgeview Institute on Nov. 16, 2016, when he pulled a pistol from his shorts and started shooting.
One round hit the buttocks of a worker, according to a warrant. Another bullet flew down a hall and hit the ceiling right above someone else.
McDonald leveled the gun at one employee’s forehead and said “back the (expletive) up,” police reported.
Nearly four months later on Thursday, a Cobb County grand jury indicted McDonald.
The 24-year-old Smyrna man's mother drove him to the facility that day.
“He had been acting strangely, staring off into the distance, talking to himself,” Smyrna Det. Andrew Grubb said in court. “She believed he was having a psychotic episode.”
The detective also said the mother knew her son regularly carried a gun.
He shot his way out of the building and ran toward a wood line, police said.
More than 150 authorities searched for him for 40 minutes. Griffin Middle School and King Springs Elementary in Smyrna were placed on lockdowns during that time.
A judge ordered he stay in a Cobb jail without bond, and that's where he has been nearly 170 days.
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