April 3 (UPI) — Noah Green, the 25-year-old who rammed his vehicle into a U.S. Capitol barricade, killing an officer, had declining mental health in the years leading up to the attack, his friends and family said.
Social media posts by Green also appeared to show support for the Nation of Islam, considered to be an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Officers shot and killed Green, of Indiana, after he rammed his car into two U.S. Capitol Police officers Friday, then got out of his car with a knife and ran “aggressively toward officers,” according to Acting Chief of Police Yogananda Pittman.
One of the officers, William “Billy” Evans, an 18-year veteran of the force, and member of the Capitol Division’s First Responder’s Unit, was killed in the attack, Pittman said in a statement Friday. The name has not been released for another Capitol Police officer who was injured and transported to a hospital.
Shortly before the U.S. Capitol attack, Green posted stories on Instagram, including links to Instagram videos of Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan speaking, CNN reported.
“The U.S. Government is the #1 enemy of Black people!” a caption on one video read.
The prior week he posted on Instagram that he believed Farrakhan saved him from “terrible afflictions,” he presumed were caused “by the CIA and FBI,” according to CNN. And in response to a comment on the post, he wrote, “I have suffered multiple home break ins, food poisonings, assaults, unauthorized operations in the hospital, mind control.”
Farrakhan leads the Nation of Islam, which is an extremist group with “deeply racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay rhetoric,” among its leaders, according to the SPLC.
Green was born in West Virginia, where he grew up in a large family, USA Today reported, and he graduated from Christopher Newport University in Virginia in 2019, where he was a defensive back on the football team.
He was a quiet athlete and was not violent, people who knew Green told USA Today, but they were concerned about changes on his social media posts in recent months, including growing support for Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.
Andre Toran, who played football with Green in college, shared a Facebook post in which Green accused his roommates of drugging him. He also wrote that he’d moved out, but suffered from withdrawals, including seizures, lack of appetite, “paranoia,” and “depression,” and also suffered “suicidal ideation.”
Green’s brother, Brendan Green, told The Washington Post his brother was ill Thursday evening and sent a disturbing text.
“I’m sorry but I’m just going to go and live and be homeless,” Brendan Green said the text read. “Thank you for everything that you’ve done. I looked up to you when I was a kid. You inspired me a lot.”
Brendan Green said his brother’s mental health had been in decline in recent years.
In mid-March, a Facebook post from Noah Green read that he was “unemployed,” after leaving his job, “partly due to afflictions, but ultimately, in search of a spiritual journey,” The Post reported.
