The man authorities believe shot and killed three Iranian musicians in Brooklyn on Monday had reportedly told friends he was suicidal, and recently threatened to shoot one of his former bandmates on Facebook.
As previously reported, 29-year-old Ali Akbar Mohammadi Rafie, who preferred to be known as Raefe Akhbar, had been kicked out of Iranian underground rock band The Free Keys about a year ago, after his increasingly erratic behavior started riling his bandmates. Akhbar initially lived with Arash Farazmand—who along with his brother Soroush Farazmand and fellow musician Ali Eskandarian, was one of the victims of Monday's shooting—and fellow Free Keys bandmate Pooya Hosseini after moving from Tehran to Brooklyn in 2011, but he was allegedly difficult to live with, and eventually the trio split.
Chillingly, the Times reports that as recently as less than a month ago, Akhbar, who had reportedly started telling friends he was suicidal and tried to swallow a fatal pill dose, began posting threatening messages on Facebook. In one, he posted a photograph of a gun, captioning it, "I wonder who to shoot first." In another, he named Anthony Azar, who later replaced him as the band's bassist, as his intended victim and asked for his address—it does not appear any of Akhbar's Facebook friends alerted the authorities after these threats were made, though his mother had contacted some of his friends earlier to express concern about his behavior.
This wasn't Akhbar's first alleged run-in with his former acquaintances. Soon after he was kicked out of Free Keys, he was reportedly escorted out of an Iranian art show at 318 Maujer, the building he returned to this week for his shooting rampage, and even tried to engage Azar in a fistfight at a bar.
And on Monday, he allegedly broke into 318 Maujer Street with an assault rifle on hand, fatally gunning down the Farazmands and Eskandarian before turning the gun on himself. Azar, who is no longer a member of Free Keys, was not in the house at the time.
