From New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is an A.P.

Long before a gunman in Indianapolis killed eight people at a FedEx facility last week,

the state where he lives had passed a red flag law intended to prevent people just like him from acquiring weapons.

Today, my colleague, Campbell Robertson, on what went wrong?

It's Thursday, April 22.

Campbell, where does the story behind this shooting start?

So a little afternoon on Tuesday, March 3, 2020, two women show up at a police precinct in Indianapolis.

One of them introduces herself as the mother of an 18-year-old named Brandon Hall.

She tells the police that she had driven him the day before to a gun store called the gun bunker,

just to look at guns.

And she was not aware that he had money with him, but he bought a shotgun and took it home.

And when they got home, she asked him, what are you going to do with the gun?

She told police that he got angry, he hit her in the arm, and he told her to shut up.

But she kept asking.

And he finally replied, she told police, this is not the life I want to live.

I'll end it my way.

I'm going to point this unloaded gun at the police and they will shoot me.

Wow.

She told police that her son gets very angry and that she was worried for her safety

and decided not to go to work on that day, but to come to the police to seek some help.

So here is a mother self-reporting to the police that her son is threatening suicide by cop.

Yes, and she's asking for their help.

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