Shooter Languished Between Delusions, Despair

Brian Kennedy is a meat manager at a supermarket, and his wife works in an optical store. Within the limits of their health insurance, the acquaintance said, the parents "went everywhere they could" in search of help for their only son.

"From the parents' standpoint, they were never given a diagnosis," he said. "They were never told what was wrong with him. Nobody figured it out."

Several of his close friends, as well as the adult acquaintance, said that when Kennedy's delusions subsided and he could think relatively clearly, he openly anguished over his mental problems, telling people he desperately wanted to be normal. They said he often talked of killing himself as an escape.

"He would tell his parents that he couldn't go on anymore unless he got some help," the acquaintance said. The ex-girlfriend said, "He told me he was going to shoot himself, and then he had some revelation where he decided not to."

Another friend, also a teenage girl, said: "One time he told me he was thinking about hanging himself. But he didn't do it because he thought God wouldn't let him do it, that God would . . . hold him in the air and not let him suffocate."

Instead of committing suicide, Kennedy armed himself May 8 with seven guns, carjacked a minivan, drove into a parking lot reserved for police personnel at the Sully District station in western Fairfax -- a few miles from his Centreville home -- and opened fire with an AK-47-style assault rifle and possibly two other weapons.

Detective Vicky O. Armel, 40, died that day. Officer Michael E. Garbarino, 53, died early Wednesday.

Kennedy's parents, who have not spoken publicly about the attack, left their Centreville townhouse after the shootings and went into seclusion with their other child, a 9-year-old girl. As of yesterday, authorities said, the couple also had not talked with Fairfax police detectives, who have repeatedly sought to interview the Kennedys about their son.

When police searched the unoccupied townhouse after the shootings, they said, they found nine guns strewn about the home. As for why the parents kept firearms, given their son's mental state, their attorney has said in a statement that the guns had been locked in two containers. "The family can only surmise that their son broke into one of the containers" before going to the police station, the statement said.

'He Couldn't Figure It Out'

At Westfield High, Kennedy "was always a little eccentric," said the former girlfriend, echoing others. "Not weird in a bad way," she said. "Just weird like in, you know, everybody's trying to find their own individuality."

Kennedy was artistic and a military buff, an offbeat kid who often dressed in camouflage pants and combat boots, knew a great deal about guns and devoted a lot of time to the student literary magazine, Calliope, contributing photos and computer graphics. As a senior, he managed the magazine's twice-yearly "coffeehouse," a fundraiser featuring music and poetry readings. "He was really into that," the ex-girlfriend said.

In the fall, he enrolled in community college as a liberal arts major. The college would not disclose his grades, but Sforza, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University, said Kennedy told him in Internet chats "that he wasn't doing well at all."