Colorado school shooting suspect says he was hearing voices, fending off ‘transforming forces’

Colo. school shooting suspect says he heard voices

GOLDEN, Colo. — The voices Bruco Strong Eagle Eastwood thought were coming from a television box haunted him for years, and he told sheriff’s deputies he continued to hear them the day he took a rifle to his old middle school and wounded two students.

Eastwood had gotten a visitor’s pass and briefly lingered inside Deer Creek Middle School, but it wasn’t until he returned to his car in the parking lot that he got his father’s hunting rifle and “made his final decision to shoot at students,” according to an arrest affidavit released Friday.

The affidavit doesn’t mention a motive for the Feb. 23 shooting, but it says Eastwood had a box of ammunition from home and bought another on the way to the suburban Denver school, about 40 miles from where he lived with his father. The affidavit, released after The Denver Post and KUSA-TV petitioned a judge to unseal it, also mentions Eastwood’s history of hearing voices, the journals he kept, and his bizarre behavior after his arrest.

Eastwood appeared to be picking things from his skin and pushing something away while deputies interviewed him, the affidavit said.

“When asked about these motions, Bruco indicated he was trying to remove what he called transforming forces from his body,” the affidavit said.

It’s unclear when Eastwood arrived at the school, but he told authorities he left his home between 11:30 a.m. and noon, and that he got there sometime before 2:50 p.m. He said it was past 3:12 p.m. when he approached students leaving for the day at the front entrance and asked them if they liked their school.

Eastwood said he first shot a girl who had turned to run away from him. Another student had his back turned to Eastwood and told investigators he heard a “boom” and then a pain on his side before falling to the ground.

Authorities said Eastwood was reloading his weapon when a teacher tackled him and other faculty contained him until police arrived at the school, just a few miles from Columbine High School, the site of one of the deadliest school shootings in 1999.

Eastwood had four live rounds of ammunition in one of his pockets when deputies searched him, the affidavit said.

Eastwood is charged with attempted murder and other counts and was being held in lieu of $1 million cash bail. He hasn’t entered a plea and is due in court for a preliminary hearing April 6.

The wounded eighth-grade students, Matt Thieu and Reagan Weber, are recovering.

Eastwood’s father, War Eagle Eastwood, has said he believes his son suffers from schizophrenia and that he was upset because he recently failed a GED test he took to try to enlist in the military.

Bruco Eastwood told investigators after his arrest that he was in a mental hospital in 2002 after he called Littleton police and reported hearing voices he believed were coming from a Nielsen television box.

He told authorities on the day of the shooting that he has heard voices ever since, despite having the box removed. He said he “may have journaled about his intentions and thoughts about what he was going to do” the day of the shooting, according to the affidavit.

The contents of those journals, which Bruco Eastwood said he kept in the kitchen and the basement of his father’s home, have not been released.