Message (since removed) on garage of searched home.
Contributed Photos
Officers retrieving guns from house Tuesday.
New Haven and Yale police suited up to search an East Rock home early Tuesday and emerged with a “large number” of firearms belonging to a man who was involved in a psychiatric episode.
The incident began early Saturday, when the 37-year-old man began screaming at a Yale security guard who was walking a student home in East Rock at Edwards and Orange in the darkness, according to Police Chief Otoniel Reyes.
The man yelled that “the government was out to get him, he hates the police, and that he was being followed by the CIA,” Reyes said.
The yelling man was in a car. He had stopped to yell at the security guard, then drove away. The security guard called police, who stopped the driver when he returned to the block. They found he was wearing a bullet-proof vest at the time and was carrying a handgun.
The man has been committed to a mental institution and does not present a threat to the public, Reyes said.
The man was not criminally charged.
Meanwhile, police noticed the man has more than a dozen firearms legally registered to him. The police obtained a “risk warrant” to seize the weapons. That allows law enforcement to take into custody firearms for which a person has a legal permit, based on potential risks to public safety.
The Yale and city police went into the house Tuesday morning to retrieve weapons. They found the “large number” of weapons, which took some searching, Reyes said. He declined to specify the number of weapons or what kinds.
The police wore what looked to neighbors like hazmat suits, but were in fact just paper gowns. They wore those because of concerns about “dirty” conditions in the house, to protect them from potential contamination, according to Assistant Police Chief Karl Jacobson, who was at the scene. They also wore face shields, as part of routine protection amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
“There’s no ongoing threat to the public,” Reyes emphasized. “He is currently under psychiatric care. The work that we’re doing out there is precautionary.”
The bomb squad participated in the search as another precaution. But the weapons found did not include bombs, Reyes said. He said the police will later release more details about what was found once the investigation wraps up.
The man is known in the neighborhood for blasting heavy metal music from his truck and screaming at passersby about government conspiracies. He posted a message on his garage (since removed) referencing police spying, Freemasons, and George Floyd.
New Haven and Yale officers Tuesday afternoon went to the Hamden home of a relative of the man, and continued the search there.