Maine ICE Agent David Brouillette Had History of Violent Behavior, Mental Illness

In its old-fashioned, green-eyeshade way, it has delivered deadpan death blows to a lot of the bullshit fables ladled out by El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago over the past decade. Now, though, it has done an excavation into the life of David Brouillette, the ICE agent who shot and killed Johan Sebastían Durán Guerrero this week on the streets of Biddeford, Maine. It is, in the fullest sense, an American horror story.

David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.

Brouillette, 37, told his ex-wife Ashley Brouillette late last year that he had been hired by ICE. She said that because of his long history of psychiatric issues, she thought he was having a mental health episode and she didn't believe him. She didn't realize he'd been telling the truth until this week, when videos began circulating online of the moments surrounding the shooting.

David and Ashley Brouillette were high school sweethearts who got married in 2007. She said she divorced him in 2009 because he had become physically violent with her, which began after she got pregnant with their daughter. According to Ashley Brouillette, he once threw boiling water at her while she was holding their child — an incident her mother Avis Collins also recounted. The abuse continued after she left him, she said.

The whole piece is like a slow spiral into hell. Brouillette is pretty clearly in need of intensive professional help, and he has been for quite some time. Instead, ICE gave him a badge and a gun and sent him out on the streets of Biddeford.

Hell, if we still had a functioning veteran's health-care system, somebody should have caught this guy and gotten him the help he needed.

His oldest daughter, Madison Brouillette, said she also witnessed her dad's volatility. "I watched my dad struggle a lot with a lot of things," she told the AP. She said she came home from school once and he told her he had been sitting on a tree stump with a gun to his head. And with my dad, he never wanted to get help," she said.

An immediate relative of David Brouillette who spoke on the condition that their name not be used said he was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder as a child — a diagnosis that Ashley Brouillette confirmed. The immediate relative described him as "extremely mentally ill" and said he attempted suicide twice at age 12 and was hospitalized multiple times. The relative said they've been estranged for years, after they broke off contact because they feared he would harm them. He did not respond to their outreach this week, the relative added.

Not a land mine. David Brouillette was a time bomb, and more than a few people heard it ticking. Too many, as it turns out.

Brouillette was initially rejected by military recruiters because of his mental health diagnoses, but recruiters encouraged him to go off his medications for a year and reapply, which he did, his immediate relative said. He was eventually able to enlist.

The recruiter told him to go off his meds? Somebody needs to be fired for this.

There are so damn many tragic elements to this story that it's hard to keep track of them all. But they all lead to one fundamental truth. Johan Sebastían Durán Guerrero is dead at 25 because David Brouillette, a violent, troubled soul who never should have been trusted with a badge, a gun, and the authority to use them, finally killed somebody. And everybody who should have cared about both men, from the Army recruiter who told Brouillette to go off his meds to the ICE recruiter who didn't even do rudimentary diligence to the president and his administration who painted a bull's-eye on Guerrero, didn't give a damn.