By Karen Farkas, The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Robert McMullen Jr. twice asked police to kill him. The first time, they saved his life. On Sunday, they didn’t.
McMullen, 33, was killed by an Akron police officer after he fired shots at police from the bushes outside his parents’ home. McMullen, who had no hands, had earlier attacked his mother with his metal prosthetic hooks as his father tried to fend him off with a board.
One officer is recovering at Akron City Hospital from a bullet that entered under his bulletproof vest and exited his back. He and a second officer fired multiple shots at McMullen. The other officer is on paid leave. Akron officials would not release their names.
McMullen’s mother, Blanche, spoke emotionally Monday of how her mentally ill son did not get the care that she and her husband, Robert, had sought. Her son had not taken medication for his paranoid schizophrenia for a year, she added.
“He threatened the family because he has not been doing well,” she said. “He told me he was ready to die.”
She said her son’s illness was diagnosed eight years ago. He had moved to West Virginia to find work, she said. According to police, West Virgina state troopers stopped him near Charleston for a traffic violation in November 1996. He led them on a short pursuit. He got out of his car holding an inert grenade that had been filled with gunpowder, said Sgt. Jay Powers, spokesman for the West Virginia State Police. When he detonated it, it blew off his hands. He asked police to kill him. Instead they saved his life by staunching the flow of blood and calling paramedics, police said.
McMullen moved back home and received mental health treatment, his mother said. He lived in a duplex in Barberton. His mother said his condition had deterioriated in the past year. “Recently we gave up,” she said.
Akron police spokeswoman Lt. Sylvia Trundle said police had responded to six calls regarding McMullen since 2000 and he was arrested twice for domestic violence. He has faced no charges in Barberton.
On Sunday, he visited his parents at their home on Triplett Boulevard.
“He seemed to be in a very good mood,” Blanche McMullen said. Trundle said the son asked for a sandwich and to borrow money.
But he became increasingly agitated. Around 8:15 p.m., he tried to attack his mother. As his father called 9-1-1, telling police his son was off his medications and had threatened to kill them, McMullen knocked the phone out of his hand. He ran out, and his parents locked the door.
Trundle said he apparently got the rifle from his car and waited for police.
Two officers arrived in two cars, and he fired at least four shots as they fired at him.
The Summit County Bomb Squad found a pipe bomb containing powder in McMullen’s Ford.
They also found a BB gun and gunpowder.