U.S. Navy veteran Ray Richardson was in a parking lot at the Togus Veterans Affairs Medical Center on July 8, walking toward his car, when he heard several loud popping and whistling sounds.
“It was like bang, bang and bang. I heard four or five shots and I heard the whistling of them going by me. I was terrified,” the 53-year-old Raymond man said recently. “I was like, what the heck was that?”
Richardson said he learned later that day that retired U.S. Marine Corps Lt. James Popkowski had been shooting at the hospital. He and another man, a VA employee, ducked as soon as they recognized the sound of bullets, he said, adding that he heard what sounded like bullets hitting the building behind him.
“I felt really angry at the guy [Popkowski], that he did what he did. I was mad that he took it out on us,” Richardson said.
Hospital spokesman Jim Doherty said police for the VA center, which has its own federally licensed force, were summoned to the hospital after a couple of employees heard gunshots in nearby woods before Popkowski was shot and killed.
Days before the incident, Popkowski practiced shooting at a makeshift range on his Grindstone property. He posted a large sign in his yard to the effect that his “doctors were killing him by not giving him stem cell medicine,” a neighbor has said.
VA officials have declined to comment on the nature of Popkowski’s treatment, citing confidentiality, and family members have said they would not comment until the investigation concludes.
In 2008, Popkowski wrote at length about his battle against depression and suicidal thoughts in an online response to an article in New Scientist magazine about the complications of certain stem cell transplant procedures. He also indicated he had been denied or had lost his veterans benefits.
“Suicide is like a little devil, always on my shoulder and always tempting me. Concern for the care of my three dogs after I am gone, my dogs being the only things I feel anything that resembles passion for, is the only thing I think that has kept me from pulling the trigger on the loaded pistol, which rests next to my pillow,” he wrote.
Several friends of Popkowski have said they saw nothing especially abnormal about his behavior in the days before the incident. An honorably discharged petty officer second class and longtime VA patient, Richardson said he could understand Popkowski’s apparent frustration.
“If you understand the VA system, what you have to go through to get the help that you need, sometimes it can be very frustrating. The process isn’t as quick as you like,” Richardson said. “The system is so overloaded. When a person can’t handle it anymore, he is just saying enough is enough.”
“I feel bad for him, I really, really do,” Richardson said of Popkowski.