Pentagon Gunman: The Warning Signs

More details surface regarding the Pentagon gunman and the warning signs:

The parents of the man shot to death after pulling a gun on Pentagon police guards Thursday had reported him missing in January and asked local authorities to hold him, concerned about his mental health.

The parents of John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister filed a missing-person report on Jan. 4, said San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill.

Hill said the report stemmed from a call the family received from a Texas state trooper on Jan. 3. The trooper said he had stopped their son for speeding on a freeway heading west outside Amarillo, Hill said.

The trooper used Bedell’s cellphone to call Bedell’s parents, apparently trying to determine whether there was sufficient cause for a mental-health hold on Bedell.

“There’s an inference in [the report] that he was concerned about his mental health,” Hill said.

It’s unclear what Bedell’s mother told the trooper. Apparently finding no cause to hold Bedell, the trooper let him go, Hill said.

Hill said Bedell’s mother called San Benito County sheriff’s deputies the next day to report her son missing and to ask for a mental-health hold in the event he was located. Deputies went to the Bedell house later. By then, his mother said, he had returned home, but she told deputies she couldn’t find him.

The missing-person case remained open until Jan. 18, when deputies returned to the Bedell home. His father told them he’d returned and to cancel the missing-person report, which they did, Hill said.

In 2006, Orange County court records show, Bedell was arrested and charged with cultivating marijuana and resisting arrest. The marijuana charge was later dropped and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of resisting arrest. He served three years’ probation, which ended in August, and for which he did Caltrans community service, according to court records.

Bedell had recently attended San Jose State University as a graduate student, studying electrical engineering, said Pat Harris, university spokeswoman. He’d enrolled in courses in the fall of 2008 through fall of 2009, she said. He hadn’t enrolled for the 2010 spring semester, but “he was a student in good standing.

He was not on academic probation” nor did he have a criminal record at the university, Harris said.

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