DETROIT — The brother of a northern Michigan man accused of stabbing 11 people at a Walmart near Traverse City said his family tried for decades to get him help, raising red flags and saying his loved ones saw an incident like Saturday's attack "coming for years."

Shane Gille said the stabbings were the culmination of years of mental health problems that started when someone gave his brother, Bradford Gille, 42, a pill to put in a bowl of marijuana that had the active ingredient in cough syrup, “and it fried his brain."

"He was never the same after that," he said.

The youngest of three boys, Bradford Gille was “the meek one,” his brother said. “When he came home (from smoking the pill), his eyes were dark, and he was speaking gibberish.”

The mental health problems escalated after that, Shane Gille said.

“He never got better,” he said. “We got a call that he was in Pennsylvania running down the road naked. That kind of thing happened all the time.”

Shane Gille said his family tried for 28 years to get his brother placed somewhere, "but they just give him disability money and he doesn’t have to check in with any mental health people."

"They just give him money," he said. "As a family, we’re so exhausted trying to deal with this, trying to get him help. We blew the whistle and raised all the flags we could raise. We’ve been seeing something like this coming for years.”

Bradford Gille, who was arraigned Monday on 11 counts of assault with intent to murder and one count of terrorism, had run-ins for years with authorities. He was charged with assault twice and destruction of property.

He was also previously accused of digging up a grave in a Petoskey cemetery and trying to remove the casket, according to court records.

Gille had run-ins with Mackinaw City police at least twice this year, including a call earlier this month reporting that he had a knife outside a local grocery store. Police said they didn't arrest him because he didn't pose a threat to anyone.

Emmet County court records and interviews help illustrate one of the more lurid contacts Gille had during a nearly 20-year period of alleged criminality that led his mother to seek help and raise awareness about Gille's mental health problems, including paranoid schizophrenia, before Saturday's attack. The case also shows how Gille escaped severe consequences that could have kept him in prison for more than a decade.

Gille was charged in 2016 with disintering and mutilating dead bodies and destroying tombs after being accused of using a shovel and sledgehammer to break into a grave at Greenwood Cemetery, the 105-acre resting place of approximately 16,000 people in Petoskey.

Shane Gille said the incident involving the grave came about because his brother thought their father, who was alive, was entombed there.

“My dad was right there, but he was convinced he was dead,” Shane Gille said of his brother.

The alleged crimes against Gille involving the cemetery were fresh on the mind of Karl Crawford, the cemetery superintendent who has worked at Greenwood Cemetery for 65 years, after learning Gille was arrested Saturday and accused of the Walmart stabbings.

"It was a very sad situation for him and his family, and now for 11 other families," Crawford told The Detroit News on Monday.

Grave incident

The grave incident happened on April 11, 2016. A Petoskey officer arrived at the cemetery following a reported grave robbery. Crawford, the superintendent, showed the officer a gravesite of a man who died two months earlier.

"It appeared that someone had removed all the dirt around the vault and attempted to gain access to the casket since there was a large hole in the vault from where someone had tried to enter it," according to a Petoskey Public Safety affidavit filed in Emmet County Circuit Court. "The cement was broken, and it appeared that the headstone from another grave was removed from its resting place and used to smash the vault."

Six days later, the officer was contacted by an Emmet County Sheriff's deputy who had stopped Gille in a white van. After the traffic stop, Gille mentioned how the water table at Greenwood Cemetery had been broken and mentioned a sledgehammer, according to the affidavit.

Gille was allowed to leave because the deputy was unaware of the cemetery vandalism at the time.

Later, investigators traced Gille to a nearby Super 8 Motel, but he had checked out by the time officers arrived.

Officers called Gille's father, Chris Gille. He told investigators his son had called him on April 16 and said "(Bradford Gille) had just bought a shovel and was going to the cemetery to dig (his father) out of the grave," according to the affidavit.

Investigators found Bradford Gille on April 17 parked in his white van near the Emmet County Jail. Gille was questioned by investigators and admitted to digging up a grave at Greenwood Cemetery, the affidavit reads.

Gille said "he had dug up a grave in the Greenwood Cemetery, broke a hole into the burial vault using a sledgehammer that he had stolen from Home Depot," according to the affidavit. "(Gille) stated he dug up the grave because the person was buried alive, but that he was mistaken about the gravesite and did not know who was buried there."

Gille also admitted overturning grave stones "because he was angry that they were burying people alive," the affidavit reads.

'A long history of mental illness'

Gille was arrested and involuntarily committed at Havenwyck Hospital in Auburn Hills for a few weeks. While there, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder "type 1... manic with severe psychotic features," court records show.

"He stated he was the Antichrist and digging a grave prior to admission," his psychiatrist, Yatinder Singhal, wrote in a court filing. "He stated he wanted to take the body out and see if there was blood on it.

"He has a long history of mental illness," the psychiatrist added. "He is talking about ghosts. He is suspicious and argumentative. Talking about killing people."

Gille was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia about 26 years ago, his mother, Beverly Gille, told the Petoskey News-Review in 2007. She talked about her son’s struggle with a serious mental health condition that, according to the Mayo Clinic, can cause hallucinations, delusions and lead to violent behavior.

She recounted Bradford Gille’s numerous arrests for misdemeanor offenses that court records show later escalated into more serious crimes.

A licensed psychologist, M. Judith Block, examined Gille after he was arrested.

"Mr. Gille's conduct was bizarre and grounded in his delusional beliefs that he needed to rescue people whose brains remained alive and able to sense pain as they suffocated underground," Block wrote. "He was compelled to aid these individuals."

She concluded Gille was mentally ill while at the cemetery and not criminally responsible.

A broader view of Gille’s life emerges from the court filing.

During a forensic evaluation related to the cemetery case, Gille said he attended high school through the 11th grade before leaving due to substance abuse.

He also voiced delusional beliefs.

Gille said he was “working on propulsion engineering” for up to eight hours a day while living at a motel. He also told Emmet County jail staff he was “working for NASA making bombs orbit around the sun.”

But at the time of the cemetery incident, Gille was unemployed and living off money from his father and disability payments.

Forensic evaluation

The forensic evaluation helped trace the roots of Gille’s mental health problems.

He reported being hospitalized for psychiatric reasons for the first time at age 14 and had a history of using drugs, including crack cocaine and heroin. Gille also said he abused morphine and OxyContin as recently as fall 2016 when he lived at a motel in Cheboygan.

At the time of the cemetery case, Gille faced felonies that could have sent him to prison for 15 years. But he was acquitted and found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2017, Emmet County Circuit Court records show.

Birmingham criminal defense lawyer Wade Fink expects Gille will undergo another mental health evaluation in the Walmart stabbing case, given the defendant’s history of mental illness.

“The court has an obligation separate from the defendant’s own lawyer to investigate someone’s competency if they have reason to believe there could be an issue,” said Fink, who is not involved in the Gille case.

The cemetery ordeal, meanwhile, stands out during Crawford's long career at Greenwood Cemetery.

"We never had anybody try to damage a (burial) vault like he did," Crawford, the cemetery superintendent, told The News. "We've had kids come and tip over markers."

Cops searched for Gille before attack

In the Walmart case, Gille is accused of stabbing strangers late Saturday afternoon after Emmet County Sheriff's deputies had tried since Friday to find and detain him.

Emmet County Sheriff’s deputies were armed with a court order and hunting for Gille but could not find the homeless man in time to prevent the attack.

The deputies had an order from Emmet County Probate Court following concerns about Gille's mental health. The concern stemmed from two encounters Petoskey police officers had with Gille on Thursday that involved loitering.

Gille appeared calm and unthreatening. But based on concerns about the homeless man's welfare, Petoskey officials obtained the court order Friday to have Gille placed in protective custody and undergo evaluation, the department said in a statement Monday.

The court order, obtained by The News on Monday, allowed for law enforcement officials to pick up Gille for examination by a psychiatrist and either a physician or licensed psychologist.

Gille requires "immediate assessment because the individual presents a substantial risk of significant physical or mental harm to himself/herself in the near future or presents a substantial risk of significant physical harm to others in the near future."

Mackinaw City Police, meanwhile, were called twice this year regarding complaints about Gille, although each time there was no reason for action beyond responding to the calls, Police Chief Todd Woods said.

“The first time was in January, when he was sleeping in a public bathroom,” Woods said. “We asked him to leave, and he left with no incident, and we never heard from him until recently.”

According to Woods, officers were called to a grocery store this month after getting a report about a dispute involving a man with a knife — Gille.

“It ended up not being the case,” Woods said. “What happened was, an employee looked out the window and said (Gille) took out a knife and was looking at it, but he didn’t threaten anyone with it, and he took it out after he’d left the store, and wasn’t near anyone.”

Woods said possession of the knife didn’t violate any laws.

“In both cases, he complied, he was polite, and there was never any issue,” Woods said. “From what I understand, he was homeless, but from what we saw, he was harmless.”

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