A Waterville man is behind bars in California, suspected of allegedly making threats toward employees at Google’s worldwide headquarters.
Police say 33-year-old Kyle Long was upset because his YouTube channel had been taken down. Google owns YouTube, and Long’s father says his son drove to California to convince Google executives to put his YouTube channel back up.
Police say it took Kyle Long four days to drive 3,300 miles cross-country from his home in Waterville to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.
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His father told CBS 13 his son suffers from a mental illness and was having an episode when he left.
“Extreme risk-taking behavior, goal directed, quick to be irritable, and this are symptoms of mania,” said Jenna Mehnert, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Maine. “And mania gives people sort of superhuman strength, the ability to keep going, so driving for long periods of time.”
Waterville police alerted police in California, who spotted Long and arrested him.
His father says his son was having an episode when he created a YouTube channel, which he thought would make everyone millionaires.
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He says Long’s wife is actually the one who took it down, but told him Google did, hoping it would calm him down.
NAMI Maine has classes to help families learn how to best support their loved ones living with a mental illness.
“And how they cannot enable, but not escalate when someone is in a more crisised or elevated state,” Mehnert said.
Police allegedly recovered three baseball bats in Long’s car, but his father insists they weren’t weapons and are his grandson’s Little League bats that were already in the car.
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“Being arrested and thinking the mental health issue will be addressed is simply not going to happen,” Mehnert said. “Unfortunately, more and more in this country, it’s becoming the way we manage it is to incarcerate people, because we haven’t gotten them services earlier.”
Police in California arrested Kyle Long on suspicion of criminal threatening. His father says he just wants his son to get the help he needs.
If you or someone you know has a mental illness, NAMI Maine urges you to call their helpline at 1-800-464-5767.