"He was just a veteran having a PTSD moment," said Larissa Danks, a radio announcer in New Town, who has talked about the situation with Wilson's family. "They thought he was trying to harm her, but he was trying to harm himself and she was trying to stop him."

The woman in the apartment told BCI in an interview after the incident that Wilson had earlier stabbed a door she tried to close and may have wanted police to kill him.

"I'm not going to leave without them shooting me," he reportedly told her.

Danks said Wilson grew up in New Town and was raised by his aunt and uncle. He was good at sports and graduated from New Town High School in 2010, she said. He was stocky and big-shouldered and often wore a cowboy hat and boots.

Wilson joined the Marines and deployed to Iraq with his best friend, Kelly Stevenson, who was in the North Dakota National Guard. When Stevenson died after returning home from his service in 2013, Wilson struggled, according to Danks.

He moved from New Town to Mandan to help his grandma and search for jobs, Danks said. He'd racked up a couple drunken driving-related offenses since 2014, and, on the night of the shooting, reports indicate he had been drinking.