Police Knew About MSU Shooter, Progressive Prosecutor’s Soft-on-Crime Approach Kept Him on the Street
“The initial charge was a felony that carried a potential penalty of five years in prison, according to the records.”
While you hear the leftists and Democrats scream about gun control, remember this. Their policies kept the Michigan State University gunman on the street.
Anthony McRae killed three people on Monday night and injured five others. He killed himself off-campus.
McRae shouldn’t have been on the street, but Ingham County’s progressive prosecutor at the time, with ties to George Soros, went soft on him in 2019:
Anthony McRae was arrested in Lansing and charged in June 2019 with carrying a concealed pistol without a concealed carry permit, according to Ingham County court records obtained Tuesday by The Detroit News. The initial charge was a felony that carried a potential penalty of five years in prison, according to the records.
At about 3 a.m. June 7, 2019, an officer encountered Anthony McRae in Lansing where the officer asked him if he had any weapons on him. McRae acknowledged he had a gun but he didn’t have a concealed weapons permit, according to court records. McRae also had a magazine in his right breast pocket, according to the court records.
“He advised the handgun was registered to him,” a court document about the incident said. “He bought it late March at Capital Discount. He was currently trying to obtain a concealed weapons permit.”
In October 2019, Ingham County prosecutors added a second charge against McRae: possession of a loaded firearm in a vehicle, a misdemeanor.
That same month, October 2019, McRae agreed to plead guilty to the lesser misdemeanor charge, and prosecutors dismissed the felony charge.
Police and McRae
Why is it that it’s always people the police or feds know about?
McRae lived in a small house in Lansing. Paul Rodney Tucker, who lives nearby, described McRae as “wild” and “hell-raiser.” He also said “there was constant trouble” at McRae’s residence:
Tucker also heard gunshot target practice from the home last summer and believed police had been called there before.
“I told my dad it was a semi-automatic pistol,” Tucker said of gunshots heard last summer. “Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.”
“It wasn’t firecrackers,” his father, Paul Quitman Tucker, added.
Megan and Tyler Bender said police went to McRae’s home before due to reports of gunfire. He “would fire out of the back door of the home.”
Siemon in Office
Carol Siemon was the prosecutor at that time. Judges and law enforcement complained about “her soft-on-crime policies.”
I found a few instances of her being soft on violent people. This one shook me to the core.
In 2020, she allowed a man who bludgeoned two women to death to plead to second-degree murder, which carries a minimum range of 30-50 years, because Siemon “doesn’t believe in life-without-parole sentences.” First-degree murder carries that sentence.
Siemon allowed that plea despite the man planning to kill four women. He killed two of them.
The plea ticked off the victims’ parents. The sheriff asked the state attorney general to take over.
It all changed in the hands of Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina when she rejected the deal and allowed the defendant to “withdraw his guilty pleas, saying Siemon was trying ‘to be creative to get around the judge and the Legislature, and quite frankly, the law’ in what the judge described as ‘textbook first-degree, premeditated’ murder cases.”
The guy ended up with a sentence of 70 to 100 years after he “pleaded guilty but mentally ill to two counts of second-degree murder.”
In March 2022, Siemon charged two teens, 14 and 16, as juveniles in the death of a 20-year-old. She also didn’t charge either one with a weapons possession felony.
“In the shooting death of Mr. Tomaz Shessia, I have talked with the victim’s mother on two occasions and met with other attorneys in my office including the Family Court Unit Chief,” Siemon said. “I then had to decide if I would petition the Family Court to ask to have these juveniles tried as adults.”
The law recognizes childhood as a unique and distinct chapter in life, from juvenile delinquency proceedings, to educational needs. As a result, it provides different punishments for children than for adults.
Siemon said, “After meeting with others about this particular case, and carefully weighing the information about all the factors I must consider, including the fact that a person was killed who no longer has his life and future in front of him, I made the decision that this doesn’t fit the criteria for me to petition for waiver.”
Siemon told News 10 she understands that the decision may not be popular, but believes she had an ethical obligation to request the charges she did.
Here’s the kicker. Siemon chose to charge five teens as juveniles in 2021-2022:
Five teens have now been charged with murder in juvenile court in the past year: two in Shessia’s death, one in 17-year-old Allayah Walker-Travis’s February shooting death and two in the October death of 18-year-old Noah Sisung.
A 13-year-old and 16-year-old are charged with murder in connection with Sisung’s death and a 16-year-old is charged in connection with Allayah’s death.
Sisung’s mother, Trina Coolman, is furious with Siemon for charging the teens police say are responsible for her son’s death as juveniles. She doesn’t think it’s fair.
Coolman said Siemon’s policies are a conflict of interest with her job title. Siemon needs to be thinking more about the victims, Coolman said, not the people who are facing charges.
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Comments
Actually a problem in closing mental institutions in the 60s.
People still blaming Reagan for that in California. All he did was follow what the court demanded.
The One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest libs that decided that all the mental institutions were just torturing the quirky fun loving types are as much to blame. Not that I trust the Psychological professions with very much, certainly not now.
Psychology and psychiatry are – in my view – voodoo with licenses.
Voodoo?
That be insult to Karine Jean-Pierre, Big Bear.
She end up Haitian Voodoo Goddess mon!
Hey, you do NOT want to do voodoo without a license. The spirits are really strict about that, and there’s a ton of paperwork (and possible fines) in the afterlife if you get caught.
Obeah is none too happy about the practitioners of voodoo without the required certifications and licensure.
“Why is it that it’s always people the police or feds know about?”
It’s almost… “systemic,” huh?
“Here’s the kicker. Siemon chose to charge five teens as juveniles in 2021-2022:”
And AGAIN she completely dropped the illegal/underage gun charge on the floor.
But we need more gun laws! To make criminals out of people who aren’t!
They won’t enforce them until they get more. They want confiscation and will keep letting this stuff go on until they get it.
Could it have anything to do with his being a knee-gro?
I am a little surprised that we never hear about one of these prosecutors getting shot by a family member of one of the victims they are responsible for.
None of the law-abiding victims wants to cross the line into vigilantism. But that will change. There really is no voting our way out of this level of damage.
That’s a shame
Am I missing something in this story?
The guy’s prior crime(s) that the DA went “soft” and left the scumbag on the street, was a weapons charge? No CC permit? Loaded gun on his person / vehicle?
In any number of other states gun rights advocates would be citing “the 2nd amendment is my permit” and would argue state regs that say otherwise are unconstitutional.
Isn’t it a slippery slope for gun rights advocates to tout state CC laws and the DA who didn’t enforce them as cause for the murders – while on the other hand arguing against same/similar gun laws as contrary to the 2A? In a perverse way, the DA could be said to have rendered a 2A friendly decision in letting the guy skate on a CC permit infraction.
Just sayin’ – the story doesn’t sit well with me …
I sympathize with your reservations. But his record is more than that.
The first time, in June, he admitted he was carrying with no CCW, but had applied for one.
In October, he got stopped again for not having one. Now, either he never applied, or he was rejected, or the state was slow-walking applications (some do). It would be helpful for a good reporter to determine which.
His neighbors called police on him on multiple occasions for shooting out of his back door in a residential area.
He had mental health issues — in a state where the cops could have red-flagged him for all of the above, but that never happened.
As the Babylon Bee writer admitted, “I don’t think a man should have to have a permit to exercise his constitutional rights, but I have been repeatedly told that permits and bans will keep criminals from carrying guns!” So the complaint is not so much “you let this man back out on the street” as it is “all the laws you claim are existentially necessary are completely phony.”
The story gets better mileage to point out Dems want more gun laws, Dems got them, then elected a Dem DA who didn’t enforce them.
It’s part of anarcho-tyranny. macrae was not the target either the anarchy or the tyranny. Keeping macrae out of prison was in the interest of both anarchy and tyranny.
Thank you for all that info, henry!
Which is exactly what Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wrigglesworth said would happen two years ago with this prosecutor’s policy and exactly why so called Red Flag Laws will not work. The system already knew about him and did diddly-squat that was effective, but puts the onus on everyone else to “turn him in”. Turn him in to who, exactly?
Absent (cooperative) eye-witness accounts of the perp firing from his back door to cite and prosecute him, LE tailed and cited him for a ticky-tack CC permit law infraction … wouldn’t that mean the only documented / adjudicated violation in the man’s record was the CC violation – and the reports of his firing from the back door were just unverified complaints? In legal terms with an eye toward having prevented the murders, only the CC infraction was actionable/of record – the other stuff is (legally) anecdotal?
It sounds like the neighbors were unwilling to testify as a matter of record (prosecution) and/or LE took the easy out with the CC charge because the shooting in a residential area couldn’t be corroborated / proved easily? I can see the case for putting some responsibility onto the (intimidated) neighbors and the (easy out) cops, and not just the Soros DA.
There were several neighbors who were eyewitnesses to his shooting. They called the cops. The cops came out. Then they went home, after doing nothing. And nothing changed. You can’t claim the neighbors were unwilling to testify if no one offered them a proceeding to testify AT.
At the end of the day, this guy had been formally convicted under Michigan Penal Code Section 750.227c, a misdemeanor which carries a potential sentence of up to 2 years, and was therefore (according to federal law) under a lifetime prohibition for possessing a gun. And the DA let him ride anyway.
Authoritarian government’s Faustian bargain has always been, “you don’t need to provide your own protection, that’s our job.” Well, then they need to be held to that standard.
Thanks for answering my questions, Henry. It didn’t make sense that they went after him on a CC charge and not a shooting in a residential neighborhood charge. Like going after the murdering racketeering Al Capone for tax evasion.
Sooner or later the voters in the areas where criminals are coddled will make a decision to leave, to stay and vote out the DA and/or legislators or to simply bend over and continue to take it.
I agree with Mr E that the crimes this shooter had previously been charged with should not have been crimes under the Second Amendment.
And to try juveniles as juveniles instead of petitioning to try them as adults seems to be properly within her discretion.
So much as I despise Soros-DAs, I find the attacks as reported here to be inappropriate.
I think the point we need to be making is, “Since you demonstrably don’t use the gun laws that are already on your plate, we’re no longer going to listen to you when you demand new ones.”
The purpose of more gun laws is NOT to disarm good good citizens, not to stop criminals.
There can be no doubt about this.
Huh?
A mind is a terrible thing to waste to the lack of an edit button.
Liberal DA’s are getting people killed. Guy in Milwaukee admitted he knew mayhem would ensue because of his policies but he freed the parade murderer anyway.
So, when do white people get to hit the streets and burn down neighborhoods because a black man murdered two white people?
Burn the cities down!
/s
Why? Because whites are not savages.
Prove me wrong.
It’s coming, but not soon enough.
This is what happens when progressive DAs who are really public defenders determine who gets prosecuted for what crime
You misspelled ‘marxists/anarchists’.
an officer encountered Anthony McRae in Lansing where the officer asked him if he had any weapons on him
So… why would the cop ask him about that? It wasn’t a casual conversation. Was he pulled over for reckless driving (and the gun thing just steamrolled that)? Was he creeping people out in a parking lot? Why did the cop approach this guy?
I think that’s probably more indicative of future problems than carrying an otherwise legal firearm on one’s person without a permit, especially if you’re not a prohibited person.
And yes, the whole problem with the Soros-bot is they (and their ilk) didn’t prosecute the very thing they say will “keep guns off the streets.” Until you fix that, the only solution I will entertain is more guns in the hands of the law-abiding, to prevent/mitigate incidents such as the MSU shooting.
The waiting game as usual: We all (woke and anti-woke) alike are treated to lengthy descriptions of the perpetrator that scrupulously omit race. Then we wait days for the inevitable photograph to be released.
The real howler is when the cops ask you to look for the person who committed crime yesterday, and then describe only his clothes. The only chance anybody has of seeing him and reporting him is if he got lucky last night,
Witnesses need to start giving ONLY the race in perp descriptions.
“If you manage to get that right in your first bulletins we’ll consider giving you a few more details.”
DIEversity breeds adversity, criminals, too.
I’d like to see a formal statistical analysis/study of how many innocent Americans have been victimized by criminals’ predations that have been directly enabled by the vile Dumb-o-crats’ criminal-enabling and coddling policies. Everything from police non-arrests to prosecutors’ laxity in charging, to judges’ laxity in sentencing. The number is outrageously and indefensibly high, clearly.
I forgot to mention the Dumb-o-crats “open borders” laxity and enabling of illegal alien criminals, as well.