Doctors: Man in Amtrak stabbing suffered delusions

SAGINAW, Mich. - Documents show that a Michigan man and Army veteran charged with stabbing four people aboard an Amtrak train had delusions at one time and spent time in jail for attacking a girlfriend.

The Saginaw News also says that Michael D. Williams' family had petitioned a Saginaw court to get him mental health treatment.

The 44-year-old is charged with four counts of assault with intent to murder and was ordered to undergo a mental evaluation.

Three fellow Amtrak passengers and a conductor were stabbed Dec. 5 on a train traveling from Chicago to Port Huron.

Records show Wanda Williams wrote in 2005 that her nephew "began saying people were following him, people were under the house and jumping out of windows and no one else can see them."

Two doctors later saw him. One wrote that Williams was having paranoid delusions due to cocaine use. The second doctor wrote that he had acute psychosis, said he used cocaine and developed hallucinations and delusions.

Police used a Taser to subdue Williams as the train was stopped at a depot in Niles, about 10 miles north of South Bend, Indiana.

The newspaper says that Saginaw police reports it got through a Freedom of Information Act request say Williams was arrested in February and pleaded guilty to domestic violence for attacking his girlfriend. A judge gave him 45 days in jail.