Last night we took you inside his home and showed you the Egbert Gordon Jr.'s troubled world. He is the burglar who was shot in his face by a police officer on Tuesday afternoon after he barricaded himself inside a Los Lagos home. And while you have gotten a glimpse inside his house tonight, Keith Swift will attempt to explore the mind of Gordon with the help of psychiatrist Dr. Roy Lopez. We stress that Dr. Lopez has never treated Gordon and he will only provide us with his observations based on media reports.
Keith Swift Reporting, [keithkswift@gmail.com]
According to Dr. Roy Lopez, a trained psychiatrist, these arrangements of junk bottles, cans, papers, and just well.....junk made by Egbert Gordon Jr. in the places he called home speak volumes about the troubled man's mental state.
Dr. Roy Lopez, Psychiatrist
"Its clear from what we've seen in his house that this man was obviously disturbed and there was a certain amount of obssessiveness in the way he was arranging the pans and the cans and everything else in his house. And he obviously was psychotic, he was hearing voices by virtue again of the arrangements and how messy it appeared. People who have mental illness will often keep their surroundings in that untidy a fashion."
Keith Swift,
Did the cans and bottles mean anything to him in particular?
Dr. Roy Lopez,
"Its possible that the arrangements of the cans, and the cans themselves, may have provided him with some sort of comfort. That is why he had them arranged that way."
But how did a seemingly once successful high
school graduate and trained electrician turn into an obsessive-compulsive madman?
Keith Swift,
How could he go from a college graduate to a madman?
Dr. Roy Lopez,
"We don't know what the stresses might have been. There, I believe, might have been some symptoms, some sign, that there was something wrong with this gentleman. What may have finally triggered him to behave the way he was behaving is hard to say. If for example he had been using drugs, that does interfere with one's thinking, particularly if you take drugs over a long period and maybe a large quantity for a day. That interferes with ones thinking and alters ones behavior."
Dr. Lopez believes Egbert Jr. might have either been schizophrenic or bi-polar - he doesn't know for sure. But based on the fact that Egbert chopped his brother with a machete, Dr. Lopez says he might have been a dangerous psychotic.
Dr. Roy Lopez,
"If a patient is schizophrenic, its hard to find that kind of behavior in him, except if he is a paranoid schizophrenic. Bipolar people would readily attack you quicker than a schizophrenic. But a schizophrenic is in his own world, he has no time for you, but a bipolar person yes."
We'll never for sure what made Egbert Jr. arrange junk, chop his brother, and barricade himself inside houses but the doctor says there is one thing we can all learn from his tragedy.
Dr. Roy Lopez,
"I would suggest that when families see something unusual in a family members' behavior, they should probably alert the clinic, come to the clinic, bring the patient to the clinic, and see how we can help with his recovery and prevent this sort of tragedy."
We note that Gordon's family was trying to get him to the Rockview Hospital, but of course that is when he attacked his older brother.
7NEWS produced for broadcast by News Director Jules Vasquez
Edited and Prepared for the internet by Keith Swift
