44-year-old Michael Darnell Williams, a resident of Saginaw with a long history of mental illness, has been charged with attempted murder. Police say Williams stabbed four people on an Amtrak train bound for Port Huron, but according to Williams, he was just fighting demons.
The attack took place at a train depot in Niles, Michigan, only 10 miles from the Indiana border. Williams was talking to a man on the train when the person “suddenly turned into a demon” and he was forced to fight for his life. He doesn’t remember much else about the events that followed, but he does recall the knife he was holding.
In reality, Williams stabbed the train’s conductor, along with three other passengers. The conductor, a 40-year-old man named Dontrol Bankhead, was stabbed twice in the head and neck and then repeatedly in the body. The passengers he wounded were all stabbed once each, either in the chest or abdomen.
One of their passengers was acting strangely
According to the Niles Police Department, they received a call from Amtrak staff while the train was stopped to allow passengers to disembark, saying that one of their passengers was acting strangely and displaying signs of increasing agitation. They requested that officers respond by coming to the Niles train station to intervene.
Police rushed to the station, but by the time they arrived, the scene was already chaotic. Officers had to force their way through the screaming crowd of people trying to disembark, before they were able to ascertain what the problem was. Williams was tasered by the first officer who could reach him, in an effort to subdue him and prevent further violence.
It was revealed shortly thereafter, that William’s history of mental illness has caused problems for him in the past. At one point in 2005 his family, frightened of his escalating violent tendencies and hallucinations, petitioned for a court order to have him treated for mental illness.
Williams served in the U.S. Army, and his family has said that he suffers from PTSD after Desert Storm. However, records from the Saginaw County Probate Court dating back to the time of their first petition, show that Williams was not suffering from PTSD, but rather paranoid delusions from cocaine abuse, along with acute psychosis brought on by drug use.
Under Michigan law, attempted murder is a felony punishable by up to life in prison. It is likely that Williams will be ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation. With his extensive mental health history, there is a possibility that he may be found unfit to stand trial.