SAGINAW, MI — A Saginaw man arrested in connection with a quadruple stabbing on an Amtrak train was paranoid and running from people he believed were out to get him, according to his sister, who said she spoke with him by phone several times in the week before the incident.

Michael D. Williams, 44, faces charges of assault with intent to murder after the incident that injured four people about 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5, in Niles.

The Niles Police Department received a report of a man "acting odd and becoming agitated" on board an Amtrak train heading toward Niles and officers were requested to investigate.

Arriving officers said they observed a commotion on the train and pushed their way past the passengers exiting and were confronted by a male subject armed with a knife. Officers used a Taser to subdue the man, identified as Williams, and he was taken into custody without further incident.

Paranoid trip toward Saginaw

His younger sister, Tracy Williams of southeast Michigan, said she spoke with her brother beginning Tuesday, Dec. 2, and said she believes her brother was hallucinating and made him fear for his own life, prompting strange behavior as he tried to get to Saginaw.

Michael Williams

Michael Williams is a military veteran who was working as a truck driver, his sister said. She said he told her he saw someone riding with him in his truck in Louisville, Kentucky, making hand signs that worried him. When he parked the truck, he saw other people making the same signs and looking at him, she said he told her by phone.

"I'm not sure what triggered this frame of mind he was in, but he said that whatever he was paranoid or hallucinated about, he thought she was against him in some form that wasn't positive," Tracy Williams said.

"He thought they were in some type of secret society, the Masons or Illuminati," she said.

He left the truck and made a plan to head to Saginaw, she said, calling to tell her he loved her, in case he "didn't make it out of here alive."

He started by getting on a Greyhound bus, but got off when he saw people making the hand signs again, he told his sister by phone.

He then bought a plane ticket, but pushed the flight back three times because of similar concerns. He slept at a VA hospital in Kentucky those nights until Friday, Dec. 5, when he told his sister he would board no matter what.

One of the times at the airport, he called the police and told his sister they responded and "laughed at him," though she wondered if he perceived some things differently than how they really occurred, noting he said he saw an officer making the same hand gestures and said he could not trust them.

He took the flight to a layover in Chicago, where he told his sister by phone that someone on the flight was whispering to him that he was going to hurt or kill him, she said.

"We were having conversations back and forth, and I said, 'You know, Mike, this doesn't make any sense. Why are they after you?'"

"Whatever he believed in his head was real to him," she said. "Nothing I could have said could make him think any different."

He saw the same man from the first flight boarding the next flight, he told his sister. Instead of boarding the connecting flight to Flint, he went to the Amtrak station and got a ticket heading east, Tracy Williams found out later.

Family members were waiting at the Bishop International Airport in Flint when news reports surfaced that a stabbing had occurred on the train.

"I'm assuming the same thing happened when he got on the train, that he must have heard and or thought that the people he thought were following him were there."

She believes the stabbing was not preplanned and that her brother "literally feared for his life."

"Never did we think he would cause any harm to any one," she said. "He never displayed any threat to anyone to that degree, even in the midst of him being paranoid this week."

Paranoid in the past

She said Williams served in Operation Desert Storm and was changed when he came back. The death of his mother about 10 years ago also impacted him, she said, and he has had a few other times when he has acted paranoid in the past.

She told him along the way he should take his medication and should get checked out at a VA hospital. In the past, he was diagnosed with some mental condition during a visit to the Aleda E. Lutz VA Medical Center in Saginaw, she said.

He lived in Saginaw before leaving for Atlanta for training to earn his CDL license this summer and got a new job driving a truck across the country, Tracy Williams said.

She said she and other family members feel for the people who were harmed.

"My heart goes out to the victims because they were innocent," she said. "He wasn't specifically targeting them. They did absolutely nothing to deserve this."

She called the incident "unbelievable," and described Michael Williams as a good person who is "giving" and "not thuggish."

"My heart goes out to him because he has an illness," she said.

He was trying to get to Saginaw to visit his grandmother, she said. She declined to comment.

Michael Darnell Williams

She believes "the system failed him" and thinks someone along the way should have seen something like this coming. She said she could not tell what was going to happen through multiple phone calls with him but she would have called police if she thought he was going to cause harm.

Williams was being held in Berrien County Jail on $1 million bond on preliminary charges authorized by the Berrien County Prosecutor's Office of four counts of assault with intent to murder. Each charge holds a maximum life sentence.

Williams was scheduled to be arraigned Monday, Dec. 8, on the charges.

— Brad Devereaux is a public safety reporter for MLive/The Saginaw News. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Google+