The mother of the Iraq War veteran who killed three officers in Baton Rouge on Sunday said she urged him to seek help from the Department of Veterans Affairs after he left the Marine Corps, but he returned unhappy with the care, according to an interview with PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley.

"They didn't want to help me," Corine Woodley said her son, Gavin Long, told her after visiting a VA facility, according to Smiley's notes. "They only help people at the top, the 1%."

Long, an African American who deployed to Iraq in 2008-09, was shot to death after opening fire on police on a busy commercial street.

Woodley said she feared he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, although he did not see combat while in Iraq.

The VA issued a statement this week saying Long had "a number of contacts" with the agency's health care system from 2008 to August 2013. The agency declined to provide details, citing medical privacy laws.

The VA has come under fire for years over its treatment of veterans returning from war. Problems include lack of staffing and poor facilities, an overburdened suicide hotline and long wait times to get appointments. The latter problem was amplified by a scandal over false reports at some facilities that made appointment wait times seems shorter than they actually were.

Woodley contacted Smiley on Monday. "I would like to shed some light on the situation," she wrote in an email Smiley shared with USA TODAY. Smiley talked to her on Tuesday and Wednesday and will interview her live on his PBS show Thursday night.

According to his notes, Woodley described a troubled son who seemed at times paranoid, believing he was "being followed and watched" and "targeted by undercover cops." Long ambushed the Baton Rouge police on his 29th birthday.

Woodley told Smiley that her son anguished over officer-involved slayings of black civilians and said that "cops always get off free at the end."

She said he had grown angry over the July 6 killing of Philando Castile by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minn., where Castile's last moments as he lay dying in his car were captured on a dramatic video by his girlfriend. Long complained to his mother that it seemed as if Castile had followed the police officer's orders but was still shot to death.

"If you stand there while someone is treated badly and you do nothing, you are as guilty as the person who inflicted the pain," he told her. "I am a man. I'm just as guilty as anyone else if I don't do anything."

From a very young age, her son was keenly aware of even subtle acts of discrimination against black people, Woodley said.

When he left the Marine Corps, where he reached the rank of sergeant, Long wanted to teach black history and traveled to Africa for two years, visiting Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda Tanzania and Uganda, camping in villages and delivering food to children.

Back home he grew increasingly disenchanted. "Gavin didn't see any progress in America with Obama as president. He viewed Obama as a puppet. He believed blacks made no progress economically under Obama."

He told his mother that he got "funny looks" from white people when he took his gun to a shooting range to practice and asked, "Why is it OK for white people to have guns, but not black people?"

Woodley said her son was fascinated by protest groups and closely followed the Occupy Wall Street Movement. But he also believed that peaceful demonstrations accomplished little and grew increasingly angry with each news story about black civilians killed by police officers. "Every cop killing pushed him over the edge," Woodley told Smiley.

Smiley is a member of the Board of Contributors of USA TODAY's Opinion section.

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