On Aug. 7, Aaron Alexis called police to his hotel room in Newport, R.I., and told them that he was being followed by three people who were keeping him awake “by talking to him and sending vibrations into his body,” according to a police report. The caller’s name has been blacked out on the report, but Lt. William Fitzgerald of the Newport police confirmed that it was Alexis.
The report says that Alexis told police he was a naval contractor and travels often. He said he had been in a “verbal altercation” with somebody on his flight from Virginia to Rhode Island. That unknown person had sent people to follow him, Alexis told police. He had moved from a hotel in Middletown, R.I. to a hotel on a Navy base, but “he heard the same voices talking to him through the walls, floor and ceiling,” the report says.
When Alexis called, he was in his third hotel. But he told police that “the voices were coming through the ceiling,” and that the people were using “’some sort of microwave machine’ to send vibrations through the ceiling, penetrating his body so he cannot fall asleep.”
Alexis would not say what the voices were saying to him, the report said. Alexis “stated that he has never felt anything like this and is worried that these individuals are going to harm him,” the report said.
Alexis told police he did not have a history of mental illness in his family, “and that he has never had any sort of mental episode.”
Officers told Alexis not to have contact with the individuals he believed to be following him, and left. In a telephone interview, Fitzgerald said there was no cause for an arrest.
“He called us, as the victim. He was fearful that these people were going to harm him,” Fitzgerald said. He said officers saw no reason to bring Alexis in for mental-health treatment: “People make a complaint like that to us all the time.”
Fitzgerald said that a copy of the report was sent to nearby Naval Station Newport. He did not know what happened then. “They said they would follow up,” Fitzgerald said.
Lisa Rama, a public affairs officer at Naval Station Newport, said officials at the Rhode Island military base were cooperating with the FBI. She declined to answer questions or comment on whether military police followed up on the August report from the Newport Police Department that Alexis had been “hearing voices.”
Washington Post staff writer Craig Whitlock contributed to this report.