Long Island, NY – The wife of Calvin Peters , Gayle– who stabbed a rabbinical student in the head and was shot by police on Tuesday – says she noticed signs last week that her husband was troubled.
Typically social and outgoing, Peters had grown quiet. Gayle thought he might have gone off his medication prescribed to him for bipolar disorder, she told her brother-in-law, Jeffrey St. Clair, reports The New York Times.
As he grew worse, Gayle reported her concerns to a local mental health provider near the family’s residence in Valley Stream, Long Island. A psychiatrist scheduled a Sunday visit to their home, but by that time, Peters had disappeared.
The family found out on Tuesday morning what happened to Peters – he had entered a Crown Heights synagogue and stabbed 22-year-old Levi Rosenblat in the head and neck before the police shot him to death.
The police said the violence did not appear to be motivated by anti-Semitism.
“I’ve known him 20 years, and I never heard him say anything anti-Semitic in his entire life,” said St. Clair.
Peters’ family said he first showed signs of bipolar disorder 20 years ago after his mother died after battling multiple myeloma. After he immigrated to the United States from Trinidad with his family, he started his bipolar medication. At first, it made him lethargic and dazed, so he stopped taking it.
Shortly after, his symptoms reappeared. In January 2006, Peters was arrested in Brooklyn and charged with driving a screwdriver into a person’s hand. In the following weeks, he was arrested again and charged with possession of crack cocaine, and arrested two weeks after that for trying to steal $500 in merchandise from Macy’s.
In 2001 and in 2002, the police had encounters with Peters as an “emotionally disturbed person.” The family held an intervention after the 2006 arrests, and Peters went back on his medication.
Unable to hold a job because of his bipolar disorder, he started devoting his life to his sons’ sports, driving them to and from practices and games, giving him purpose, and bringing happiness to his life again.