Tonight we know the identity of the burglary suspect who a police officer shot and killed inside a Los Lagos home on Tuesday afternoon. His name is 29-year-old Egbert Gordon Jr. His family called police to identify him after they heard 7NEWS last night describing the strange arrangement he'd assembled inside the Los Lagos home. His family says Gordon, who is a trained electrician, was mentally ill for most of his adult life and ran away last week which is when they believe he broke into the Los Lagos home. Last night our team took you into his stolen home in Los Lagos (See An Intruder's Strange Life) and tonight_ Keith Swift and Fortunato Noble_ will take you into Gordon's real home in Lord's Bank, which offers another disturbing glimpse into his troubled world.
Keith Swift Reporting, [keithkswift@gmail.com]
This is where Egbert Gordon Jr. called home...and how he lived is a pretty good indicator of what his state of mind was. Just take a look at all these
intricate arrangements he made with odd items. There you see: cans, bottles, a toothpaste box, Gatorade bottles, a drum, and just about anything Egbert Gordon could get his hands on, collected and arranged in a strange, intricate design.
Across the yard, this small cement structure was another home to Egbert Jr. As you can see the structures are connected by wires decorated with his favorite junk item - cans. In the second structure cans, foam plates, and plastic bottles are on the ceiling, on the wall, and even on the fan.
All these elaborate arrangements of cans, bottles, gum wrappers, and other loose items are the creation of a 29-year-old man, this man Egbert Jr. seen here in his graduation picture from Gwen Liz in the mid 90s and a couple years later sporting dreads as a proud Rastafarian. But more recently he became the
Egbert Jr. with the low haircut who his father and brother says battled mental problems.
Egbert Gordon Sr., Father
"Yes he had a mental problem. He didn't go a mental institution as yet but was recommended to go. He didn't want to go and that is the reason why he ran away."
Keith Swift,
So the family was trying to get help and he did not want to go?
Egbert Gordon Sr.,
"He did not want to go and that is the reason why he ran away."
Glen Williams, Brother
"That is how I ended up getting injured, we wanted to get him."
That's Egbert Jr.'s brother older Glen Williams. Williams says he almost lost his left arm last week when Egbert charged at him with a machete. And Egbert attacked his brother because the family was trying to cart him away to a mental hospital.
Glen Williams,
"The twentieth we went to his house and tried to get the machete from him to try and get him to the place to get help. Later on we had a confrontation where we wrestled on the ground and I ended up getting chopped by Egbert and I ended up at the hospital for some time. My parents kept going to the Ladyville Police station to ask them to help find the boy because after he chopped me he ran away. They couldn't find him but they didn't even look; as far as we know they didn't even look. Because it's a mental case it looks like they said that they cannot get involved."
Keith Swift,
But why did your brother chop you?
Glen Williams,
"We were trying to get the machete from him to try and get help."
Help, which the family says they never got from the authorities.
Egbert Gordon Sr.,
"There was nothing else we could do because without someone, authorities like the police to give you a hand, then you cannot do anything about it."
Glen Williams,
"I disappointed that all the time we have to depend on the Police Department to protect we or help we in issues they are supposed to and we don't get it. That is my disappointment. It didn't have to play out that he had to get shoot in his face, if they had follow up on the investigation from day one when we were asking for their assistance, he probably would have been recovering in a mental facility."
Keith Swift,
But you wouldn't argue that Egbert Jr. was violent?
Egbert Gordon Sr.,
"He was violent but not to the point that he would have attacked a police officer? He just does it to protect himself."
Keith Swift,
But he attacked his own brother.
Glen Williams,
"We went to try and help him."
Keith Swift,
But the police officers would also have been here to try and help.
Egbert Gordon Sr.,
"Yeah but the police didn't have to shoot. Okay maybe they had to shoot but they didn't have to kill him."
Glen Williams,
"The objective was never to get him killed, it was to try and get help for him. We didn't want him to get killed because we could have done that ourselves. We wanted him to get help."
Help which never came and now instead of Rockview Hospital, the man who was an obsessive arranger both at home and in his stolen home is in the morgue.
The family strongly objects to police's claim that Gordon had a gun. They say that his choice weapons are a hammer and a machete. They add that Gordon had no money to be able to purchase a gun. While he was believed to suffer from a mental illness he was never clinically diagnosed. He graduated from both Gwen Lizarraga High School and the Center for Employment Training. His family suspects addiction was the root of his instability.
