Incident With Rifle Leads to Alzheimer’s Diagnosis

Saying later that he was fearful and angry, 90-year-old Louis J. Anderson picked up an antique .22-caliber hunting rifle, opened his front door and pointed the unloaded weapon at some neighborhood kids he said had taunted him for weeks.

In the days since 10 police officers responded to that act last month by surrounding his house, weapons drawn, Anderson has spent time in a locked mental health facility and his daughter has made arrangements to relocate him closer to her New Mexico home.

That’s only part of the story, say neighbors and the youths who said they often played amid old books about Charlie Chaplin and steamboats in Anderson’s living room. They say the retired widower would give as good as he got while showing neighborhood youngsters his guns, challenging them to show off their boxing skills and telling stories of his days riding the rails on an Alaskan steam train prospecting for gold.

There’s another part of the story too, say those familiar with the rapidly expanding aging population across Ventura County. As with more than 12,000 other county residents, Anderson has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

For his part, Anderson said he has no regrets about what he did Jan. 25. In fact, if faced with the same set of circumstances, he said, he would do it again.

“I had no intention of shooting them. That [actually firing] was a last resort,” Anderson said between slow bites of ice cream while on a recent outing to Ventura Harbor Village with his daughter, Nancy Antilla.

“If I had wanted to kill them, I would have loaded the gun.”

He said three adolescents who had previously visited his home were incessantly pounding on his front door and ringing the bell that day. Despite his pleas to be left alone, he said, the kids persisted until he came to the door. They scattered, but came back each time he returned inside.

Eventually, Anderson walked onto his lawn brandishing his weapon in their direction.

“I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. You can’t even stay in your house,’ ” he said. “When someone is kicking your door . . . what am I going to do?”

Anderson’s trip to the harbor Thursday--a favorite excursion with his daughter when she makes the occasional visit from her home in Hobbs, N.M.--was probably his last.

He was expected to have boarded a plane with his daughter on Saturday for a flight to New Mexico, where Antilla has arranged for him to live in an assisted-living facility.

“I have been getting feedback from some of his neighbors who said I should have done something” earlier, said Antilla, 49, Anderson’s only child. “I wanted to honor my father and let him live life on his own for as long as he could.”

Antilla said doctors at Vista Del Mar Hospital, a Ventura mental health facility, told her that her father was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Anderson was taken to the facility shortly after the rifle incident.

He was supposed to be held for 72 hours but stayed longer while Antilla cleaned up his cluttered house, had a security system installed and visited several Ventura-area assisted-living facilities before deciding to move him near her home. Doctors at the hospital prescribed him a drug designed to slow the progression of the disease, Antilla said.

After initial hesitation when told of Anderson’s rifle-wielding incident, officials at the Hobbs facility agreed to take him in, Antilla said.

She said that once she gets her father’s house cleaned up and his large collection of tools, pulleys, rusted machines and odd contraptions removed from the property, she will rent the home out.

Although Anderson calls himself a nonconformist with a fiercely independent streak, he said he’s ready to spend the final phase of his life with others.

“Not to worry about it,” said Anderson, his still youthful eyes looking out through thick-rimmed glasses. “It’s all over now. It will either pan out or it won’t.”

Neighbors and their children who live and play in Anderson’s quiet Montalvo neighborhood said that in recent months his house had become the unlikely meeting spot for a small band of kids looking for something to do after school.

They called him “Mack” because that’s what Anderson called everybody on the block, said Anthony Cano, 14.

“I stopped going over there,” Anthony said. “It kind of freaked me out, because he was so old.”

Andrew Arroyo, 12, said he and his friends would sometimes tease Anderson by ringing his doorbell and running off. But a little while later they’d be inside his house again for a friendly visit. Even when Anderson pointed the rifle at Andrew and his two friends before the police arrived, the boys were still laughing, he said.

“He was kind of a friend, I guess. He’d tell stories and make us laugh,” said Andrew, who lives with his mother and infant brother in a small apartment on nearby Hummingbird Street. “It was fun when he would cuss at us.”

Anderson denied that he and the children were close friends and said he had called the Ventura Police Department once in the days leading up to his threatening gesture that brought police to the door. He said he ended that call before a report could be taken, and his daughter suggested he may have gotten confused during the call and hung up.

Lt. Quinn Fenwick said there is no record of any calls from the house about any incidents. More important, Fenwick said, it should be clear that pulling a rifle on someone is never a good idea.

“Obviously, pointing weapons at kids playing ‘ding-dong-ditch-it’ is inappropriate,” Fenwick said. “We believe we handled this appropriately by evaluating Mr. Anderson and recognizing that the conduct was inappropriate.”

Fenwick said officers detained Anderson but did not book him on gun charges because “they realized right away that Mr. Anderson was not in possession of his full faculties.” Instead, he was later taken to Vista Del Mar for observation.

Linda Robertson, a neighbor who telephoned Anderson when the police arrived and urged him to come out of his house, said she often worried about his well-being but was rebuffed when she suggested he use Meals on Wheels or other services for seniors.

“He didn’t hardly eat,” she said of Anderson, who lived off his monthly Social Security check and a savings account he had amassed over the years. “I would give him bread. I don’t think he went to the store very much.”

Anderson’s story is not uncommon, said Sandra McMullen, program director for the Alzheimer’s Assn. of Ventura County.

“He’s not unusual, believe me,” McMullen said. “We just don’t know where they are.”

She said about 12,000 people across the county, including some under 65, have some form of Alzheimer’s disease. McMullen and others who study this area’s aging trends say the number will most likely grow as baby boomers reach retirement age during the next 20 years.

“The people we talk to are not prepared and they have not thought about it,” said Sylvia Taylor, executive director of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman of Ventura County. “They are not prepared at all.”