The mother of the suspected shooter charged with killing four passengers Monday aboard a CTA Blue Line train said she believes her son suffered a mental breakdown.
“I don’t really know how to diagnose mental illness, but he was not acting himself,” Laquita Lewis told NBC 5 Investigates during an interview Thursday.
Prosecutors allege that Rhianni Davis boarded a CTA Blue Line train early Monday and shot four people without provocation. Three of the four victims were asleep at the time. Davis made an initial appearance in court on Wednesday and is being held without bond.
Lewis said her son, Rhianni Davis, was homeless and had been struggling with mental health issues for years after a person he was in a relationship with was killed. That was more than a year ago.
Lewis declined to identify that person.
“He lost someone. And it seemed that it spiraled from there,” she said.
When they spoke by phone last week, she said they discussed him getting a state ID as Davis had struggled recently to find steady employment and was working in fast food. He didn’t like it as much as previous job working as a security guard, Lewis said.
While he had “little outbursts” Lewis said there was nothing, no behavior that she says that would’ve foretold what prosecutors said happened early Monday – they allege in court records that Rhianni Davis boarded a CTA Blue Line train and shot four unsuspecting passengers at close range.
When asked how she was doing with the news that her son is alleged to have fatally shot four people, she said:
“I’m hurt. I’m hurt because I didn’t raise my kids to participate in this. I raised them to stand up for themselves and others and again I feel as though I failed my child because he needed help and I was not at the time – I did not know exactly how to help him,” Lewis said.
Part of the reason she agreed to speak out is that she said her family has received threatening messages and she said that the images that people see of her son on TV leaving the CTA platform is not the person she knows.
She said he likes to laugh, loves music, but “he has not been participating in life so to speak” for two years.
When asked about what message she would have to the victims’ families, she said:
“I very sorry – very sorry that they lost their lives due to this situation. I am very sorry for their families losing them due to this situation. Nobody deserves that. I’m sorry that they had to lose their lives in that situation. It’s a loss of all lives. Because not only did their families lose them but I just lost my son to the system.”