Divorce paperwork filed by the parents of the Madden NFL 19 tournament shooter reveal a history of mental illness, including an apparent ‘obsession’ with video games.
This past Sunday, David Katz entered the GLHF Game Bar in Jacksonville, Florida during a Madden NFL 19 tournament and opened fire, killing Taylor Robertson and Elijah Clayton and injuring 10 other people. Katz’s rampage ended when he turned the gun on himself. In the wake of the shooting, more information about Katz and his life have come to light, specifically his history with mental illness and apparent obsession with playing video games.
This information comes from divorce filings filed by David’s parents Richard and Elizabeth Katz. According to the divorce filings, David played video games “obsessively” to the point where he “refused to go to school or bathe.” David’s mother Elizabeth claims that her son exhibited poor hygiene, not washing his hair for days, and when she confiscated his video games, she would find him “just walking around the house in circles.”
In the divorce filings, Elizabeth documented at least one violent incident involving her son and video games. Apparently she confiscated his video game controllers and locked them away. In response, David Katz punched a hole in the door. There were reportedly multiple instances where Elizabeth called the police on David, and went so far as to accuse him of “abuse.”
Following his parents’ divorce, David’s behavior appeared to worsen. He continued to miss school, sometimes by curling up in a ball and sobbing. David received mental health treatment and was prescribed unspecified antidepressants as well as Risperidal, an anti-psychotic, that Elizabeth claims Richard told him not to take.
Over the course of his life, David was admitted to psychiatric hospitals on at least two occasions, one time for 12 days and another for 13 days. As stated in the divorce filings, David’s father Richard felt that Elizabeth misrepresented their son’s mental state by lying to mental health professionals, and he thought she was trying to get psychiatric drugs to “perform the work that parents would naturally do.”
Following the Madden NFL 19 tournament shooting, David’s mental health is now a major part of the discussion as people try to make sense of the tragic incident. It’s clear that he struggled with mental illness throughout his life, and it’s not unreasonable to suggest his mental health played a role in his horrific actions this past Sunday.
