(Newser)
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The gunman who killed two people near the Texas A&M campus before he was fatally shot by police yesterday was a gun fanatic who was battling mental illness. Thomas Caffall's stepdad called the gunman a "ticking time bomb." He was "crazy as hell," Richard Weaver told local TV station KPRC. Caffall, whose deadly rampage was triggered as he was about to be evicted from his College Park home, posted several photos of sophisticated weapons on his Facebook page. "It's not an AK-47. It's a Czech vz. 58. Just picked it up today. Can't wait to try it out on the range," he wrote in June. In another post spotted by Fox 19, he notes: "I just got a new toy. It's a Russian Mosin Nagant that looks like it might not have been fired in 80 years, but was extremely well preserved. I'll be at the gun range as much as I can."
Caffall, 35, also lists snipers as "inspirational people," and notes: “I am pulling a cross between Forrest Gump and Jack Kerouac (without the drugs). I'm on the road, permanently.” Caffall was suffering from increasingly serious mental issues, his mother, Linda Weaver, told the Huffington Post. "The minute I saw the TV I knew it was him," said Weaver. "I've been that worried about him." Weaver said she had been estranged from her son for months. "We are just devastated," she said. "He's been very deeply troubled. If you are going to commit suicide, why take all these other people with you?"
