A former Texas Capitol staffer accused of killing of his neighbor and going on a 2018 shooting rampage in South Austin has been found to be competent to stand trial, according to the Travis County district attorney’s office.
The competency finding will allow hearings to resume on Curry’s charges. He was found incompetent to stand trial in September and was sent to a state psychiatric hospital in Vernon to be treated.
Prosecutors and Curry’s attorney are scheduled Tuesday to discuss the competency report.
Curry fatally shot his neighbor, 32-year-old Christian Meroney, at the Post South Lamar Apartments and shot more people two days later in four other unconnected incidents, according to an affidavit police filed in 2018.
He was taken into custody when police found him returning to his apartment. Police searched Curry’s Chevy Tahoe and found two handguns and a rifle — all of them loaded — along with spent cartridge casings.
Questions about the role mental health played in the attacks came to light last year through emails that showed Curry had, months before the shootings, displayed a pattern of odd behavior that led to him being banned from the Capitol. Curry had worked on the staff of state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, and was fired in May 2017. A staff member informed the Texas Department of Public Safety, which handles security at the Capitol, that Curry had returned to the office 10 months later and behaved erratically.
Another person reported that Curry had visited the office of then-state Sen. Van Taylor, R-Plano, around that time and exhibited “unstable behavior.”
On the day of the apparently random shootings, Curry, according to court documents, went to a gun range in South Austin and asked to buy a suppressor for a gun. The staff there sent him away because he was “acting crazy,” court records say.
Other court records show Curry had a doctor’s prescription for risperidone, an anti-psychotic used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. A date for the prescription was not given.
Incompetency differs from the legal definition of insanity, which could come up later in the case if Curry’s lawyer believes his client suffers from a severe mental disorder that made him incapable of knowing that the actions he’s accused of committing were wrong at the time.
This is a developing story; check back for details.
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