Alcohol, drugs in shooter’s blood
BOISE – The gunman who killed himself and three others in a shooting rampage last month in Moscow had small amounts of alcohol, marijuana and lithium in his system at the time of the attack, a toxicology report says.
Results of the report on shooter Jason Hamilton, 36, were shared by investigators with the Idaho State Police, the agency investigating the spree.
Hamilton, a janitor with a history of legal problems, killed his wife late on May 19 at their home before driving into town, where he opened fire at the Latah County sheriff’s dispatch center, killing one police officer and wounding three others. Later, he took cover in a church, where he fatally shot the church sexton and then took his own life. Investigators say they recovered 148 shell casings from the scene.
Idaho State Police Lt. Charles Spencer said Hamilton’s autopsy revealed amounts of lithium below therapeutic levels.
The question still to be answered is whether the lithium, mixed with alcohol and trace amounts of marijuana, had any influence on Hamilton’s deadly actions, Spencer said.
“So far, based on reports, we don’t see any of those substances playing any role in the shooting,” Spencer said. “That could change, but it all depends on what experts have to say about the presence of those chemicals in his system.”
The report, issued this week, listed Hamilton’s blood alcohol content at .033, below the Idaho legal intoxication threshold of .08. Investigators have not yet determined when Hamilton used marijuana.
Spencer said the lithium was prescribed, but there is no indication whether Hamilton had stopped taking the drug or was prescribed too small a dose to properly manage his mental health issues.
Hamilton had been convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, had attempted suicide by pills in February, and then warned a mental health professional that he wanted to kill himself in a way that would harm others, a statement he later recanted.
Lithium is used to treat and prevent episodes of mania in people diagnosed with bipolar disorder and works by decreasing abnormal activity in the brain, according to the National Institutes of Health.
But little is known about how it reacts with other substances such as alcohol and marijuana, said Dr. Thomas Wright, medical director at Rosecrance, a substance abuse treatment center in Rockford, Ill.
“For someone coming off lithium, it could bring back symptoms they were being treated for,” Wright said. Generally “that could make people think paranoid thoughts again, or believe that someone was trying to hurt them. A lot of manic people can get violent, irritable or show aggression.”
Spencer said the ongoing investigation is also focusing on building an exact timeline of the shooting and analyzing the law enforcement response.
“Our overall impression so far … is all the officers that responded did a very good job,” Spencer said. “I don’t know if they could have done anything different. This was clearly an ambush, and for police it’s very difficult to avoid that kind of attack.”