Mapleton man charged with Mass. shootings
Mapleton man charged with Mass. shootings
The Maine man charged with randomly shooting two people from his car and missing a third early Sunday morning on the streets of Duxbury, Massachusetts, was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation at a state hospital, according to a clerk at the Plymouth, Massachusetts, District Court.
Lucas McPherson, 25, of Mapleton faces more than a dozen charges, including three counts of attempted murder, assault and battery on a police officer and illegal gun possession, according to the complaint filed Monday in Plymouth District Court.
Not guilty pleas to all charges were entered Monday morning when McPherson made his first appearance before a judge, the clerk said.
McPherson was ordered to be evaluated at Bridgewater State Hospital, a facility similar to Maine’s Riverview Psychiatric Center, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The evaluation is to determine if McPherson is competent to stand trial and whether he was legally sane at the time of the incidents, she said.
A status conference was scheduled for May 13, 2016, the clerk said.
The Quincy Patriot Ledger reported that McPherson stood in court handcuffed, wearing a brown T-shirt, but “showed little reaction” when informed of the charges filed against him.
McPherson’s father, David McPherson, told police that his son has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was not taking his medication, according to the affidavit filed with the complaint. The father told police that Lucas McPherson “left their home in Maine a week ago and was driving across the country. Mr. McPherson stated that he has been trying to get Lucas to come home so he can get him back on his medication.”
McPherson was involved in an “incident” involving a shotgun in Maine earlier this month, but his parents decided not to press charges, the affidavit said.
In Massachusetts, McPherson allegedly fired a shotgun from inside his vehicle in separate incidents, wounding one man who was driving along Tremont Street in Duxbury near the Town Hall and another on Tobey Garden Street who was letting out his dog, Duxbury police chief Matthew Clancy said in a news release posted on the department’s website Sunday.
Duxbury police found a 20-gauge shotgun on the passenger seat of the car McPherson was driving and yellow shotgun shells near it believed to have been used in all three shootings, the affidavit said. A car that was struck had “approximately eight indents and holes that appeared to be consistent with buckshot from a shotgun.”
The first shooting occurred around 1:15 a.m., when a 33-year-old Marshfield man was shot in the abdomen by someone in a passing vehicle near Town Hall and drove himself to the nearby Duxbury Fire Station for help, the police chief said Sunday. About 20 minutes later McPherson’s Chevy Impala, which has a Maine registration, was spotted near Tobey Garden Street. Just before police arrived McPherson allegedly shot another man.
A woman called police Sunday to report she had discovered holes in her car, the affidavit said. The woman told police that she thought her car had backfired.
The police chief said at the news conference late Sunday afternoon that the third person mostly likely was fired upon about 1:30 a.m., between the other two shootings, while she was driving on Tobey Garden Street, according to media reports.
“[The second victim] shot was letting his dog out when the man pulled in front of the home and shot him seconds before the first Duxbury cruiser arrived,” Clancy said.
“As the officer approached the [suspect’s] vehicle, a resident quickly approached stating he was just shot by the occupant of the vehicle,” the police chief said. “The vehicle again tried to flee the area but was blocked in by the Duxbury police cruiser. As the officer attempted to arrest the man he came at the officer with a hunting knife and was subdued by the officer using an electronic control weapon [Taser].”
A Kingston police officer arrived and assisted with the arrest.
Massachusetts State Police detectives and crime scene technicians went to the scene of the shootings and are working with Duxbury police detectives on the investigation, Clancy said.
At the news conference, Clancy described the victims’ injuries as “minor.”
“This is completely random and this is completely out of character for our community, clearly,” the police chief said, according to the Quincy Patriot Ledger.
Duxbury is a coastal community with about 15,000 residents located about 35 miles south of Boston. The town was a center of shipbuilding until the mid-19th century when ships became too large for the shallow bay, according to its website. Today, it is known for cranberry production and oysters.
McPherson was convicted in Presque Isle District Court in 2012 of operating a vehicle while under influence of intoxicants and was ordered to pay a $500 fine, spend 48 hours in jail and have his driver’s license suspended for 90 days, according to BDN archives.
“We have had interactions with Mr. McPherson, the most recent being a traffic stop in October of 2015,” Presque Isle police Chief Matthew J. Irwin said Monday in an email. “We arrested him in 2012 for OUI, and he was involved in a fight where no criminal charges were filed in 2008.”
BDN writer Nok-Noi Ricker and St. John Valley Times writer Don Eno contributed to this report.
