Say hello to Everton Brown, a man from Baltimore, Maryland, seen here in a YouTube video from 2010, protesting at the White House, claiming that he was being targeted for harassment by the FBI.
Brown was not targeted by the FBI. He was crazy.
And what do we know about crazy people, boys and girls? We can leave it to professionals to provide a clinical diagnosis — paranoid schizophrenia, most likely — but when someone organizes their entire life around the delusional belief that they are a victim of persecution, nothing prevents citizens from concluding this person is crazy:
Everton Brown believed that drones were following him. He thought the FBI was breaking into his house to feed his dog and worried the authorities were tampering with his computer.
That’s according to records kept by Baltimore County police, whom Brown called more than 100 times over the past 24 years. Neighbors, too, called police to the Woodlawn neighborhood. They say Brown harassed them and yelled from his porch through a bullhorn.
Despite decades of encounters with local authorities, Brown’s actions continued until they had tragic consequences. Last Saturday morning, police say, Brown, 56, set fire to his home, then shot and killed three neighbors. . . .