This story was originally published in the Forward.
The Jewish man who allegedly tried to attack his former Jewish high school in Memphis on Monday posted on Facebook about mental anguish related to anger toward his alma mater, an examination of his post history reveals. In one of those posts, he also wrote about experiencing flashbacks to the death of his father, who was fatally shot by Memphis police outside his childhood home 20 years ago.
The alleged gunman’s mother filed a lawsuit against the city in 2010 in which she accused police of needlessly killing her husband in 2003, and argued that the ordeal had left her and her son emotionally distraught. The city argued that Dr. Anthony J. Bowman posed a threat to others, and the lawsuit was dismissed.
Joel Bowman, identified in local news reports based on interviews with friends and family as the suspect in Monday’s thwarted attack on Margolin Jewish High School, was shot and apprehended by police, and is now in critical condition at a Memphis hospital.
Authorities said the suspect drove up to the Orthodox school in a maroon pick-up truck and fired shots before entering through an exterior door, where security cameras captured him holding a handgun. He turned around after locked security doors prevented him from gaining access to the rest of the building.
Several staff members and construction workers, the only people in the school, were not hurt.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which is looking into the Monday shooting, would not confirm Bowman’s identity when contacted by the Forward Tuesday morning.
“Thankfully, that school had a great safety procedure and process in place and avoided anyone being harmed or injured at that scene,” said Dan Crow, an assistant police chief.
‘Trapped in my own head’
Bowman, 33, posted four times on Facebook on Monday, the day of the shooting, including at 12:55 p.m., about 25 minutes before authorities say he arrived at the school.
“Gots time on my hands. ‘Home’ court visit,” wrote Bowman, who graduated from the school in 2009, when it was called Cooper Yeshiva, and had played as a starter on the school’s basketball team.
It was unclear why Bowman allegedly returned to campus Monday with a gun. But his Facebook posts depict a man shattered by family tragedy and struggling with intense mood swings. In the same week that he gushed about friends he had made at the school, he lashed out at his alma mater’s failure to understand him.
In a July 25 post, Bowman wrote that he suffered from complex post-traumatic stress disorder and ADHD. He implied those conditions were only recently diagnosed, but that he experienced symptoms of them while a student.
“Having this info now, makes it EXTREMELY HARD to be appreciative of ANY time I spent in ‘School,’” Bowman wrote. “Constantly being told I was Lazy, Un-driven, Dumb, Angry, Weird, A Loner, Letting my Father down…”
Bowman also said that he had been haunted by flashbacks of his father’s death.
“I’ve been trapped in my own head with 20 years worth of ‘talking’ to do,” Bowman wrote.
A few well-wishers commented on the post.
Other Bowman posts in the last seven days included lengthy tributes to people who supported him growing up and implied that he had made a recent trip to a gun shop.
“Genuinely to the core, I don’t think he would ever intentionally hurt someone,” Brittney Eshelman-Worch, who attended the school, told WREG. “He has struggled with mental health for a number of years.”
She said his father’s shooting traumatized the younger Bowman: “I think it was like nine or 10 police officers all opened fire at the same time and completely mutilated him.”
Death of Dr. Bowman
Police shot Dr. Bowman on May 14, 2003, after they responded to a 911 call from Joel Bowman’s mother, Susan, in which she said that her husband was acting erratically and taking medication for bipolar disorder.
Police shot and killed him when he ran out of their house pointing a handgun at his own head.
In the 2010 lawsuit Susan Bowman filed against the city of Memphis, she alleged that “though emotionally disturbed, Dr. Bowman was not a threat to anyone else.”
In addition to the emotional distress suffered over Dr. Bowman’s violent death, she said she and her son had also been harmed by what the lawsuit described as an “illegal search” of her home.
Ronald Krelstein, the lawyer who represented Susan Bowman, did not immediately respond to inquiries from the Forward.
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.