The owner of the construction temp service who would sometimes hire Wall said the carpenter came off as “kind of off” but was one of his most timid workers.
He did hear from other workers that Wall told them he was living in a shed at one point. Wall also said he was playing the stock market and wouldn’t need to do construction jobs anymore.
The employer, who asked that his name not be published, said he called Wall for a job recently and that Wall told him, “No, I’m going through some stuff. I can’t really work.”
Maia Knight of Wellington is the sister of Wall’s ex-wife, Monica Sandra Wall. The Walls married in 2003 and divorced in July 2017.
“He had mental issues. He wasn’t taking care of himself,” Knight said. “My sister was going to the courthouse, going to police, telling everyone he needs help. My sister was trying to help him but didn’t know how.”
She said Timothy Wall wasn’t getting the help he needed for his mental illness, which she said was schizophrenia.
“He wasn’t really taking the medicine, and he had alcohol problems at one point,” she said. “He didn’t even want to help himself. My sister would say, ‘I can’t tell a grown man what to do do if he doesn’t want to do it himself.'”
The couple has a 14-year-old daughter. “She has been going through a tough time, seeing him like that,” Knight said.
A Palm Beach County circuit judge had allowed Timothy Wall to live in his marital home in Royal Palm Beach for a few months. But in May 2019, Monica Sandra Wall evicted him, court records show.
“She did evict him because he kept going back to her home and she was going to cops and getting no help,” Knight said.
The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond a Post email asking if Wall’s ex-wife had reached out previously for help with her husband’s mental illness.
Latest violent altercation in a Palm Beach County public space
Leah Tyron, a Royal Pam Beach resident, said her cousin spoke to the sheriff’s office.
“That guy had plans to do this before he even got here,” Tyron said. “He had the plan that he was going to do something to himself, and just happened to take somebody out with him.”
The tragedy is the second recent shooting at a retailer that is part of the everyday routine of residents in Palm Beach County.
Samuel Rossetti of Palm Springs was shot dead while in the drive-thru line of a Lake Worth Beach Starbucks in April following a confrontation with the car in front of him. The driver of that vehicle, Justin Ray Boersma, is facing a first-degree murder charge.
“(The shooting) makes me very cautious to have altercations with people,” Tyron said. “Here I would say something in the past if someone upset me. Now I probably won’t, because of the fact that Florida doesn’t take care of people with mental illness.”
Sarah Brown, a Loxahatchee resident and a hairstylist at Festive Cuts Beauty Salon in the Publix plaza, said customers and Publix employees took refuge at her business after the shooting.
“It was a normal day. I just had a consultation with my client, went to the back room to mix her color,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “Then all of a sudden like a barrel of monkeys about 15 people — two even with carts ran into our small salon screaming ‘Active Shooter! Everyone get in lock the doors get away from the windows!!!’ “
She had the salon’s receptionist hold the door open as people rushed in, many of them panicked and hysterical.
“Unfortunately a couple people saw it happen and I can’t even imagine how horrific that was to witness,” she said.
The Publix is expected to reopen Saturday. Customers returned Friday morning to collect items they left behind. A tearful Anay Hernandez said the shooting makes her fear for the safety of her children.
“I don’t feel safe to go anywhere with my kids anymore,” she said. “I wanted to come by yesterday because I have medication in the pharmacy but, for some reason, I didn’t come by. … I was supposed to be here around 11.”
Brown, the hair stylist, said the shooting was a reminder that more stringent gun control was needed in the U.S. She said she is a gun owner.
“It needs to be harder to get a gun. I’m sorry, but it needs to be,” Brown said. “It won’t solve everything; I understand that. But it can solve or prevent some incidents like these.”
For Brown, she thought that it could have easily been her or any other unsuspecting member of the public in the Publix.
“The panic on these peoples’ faces also made me emotional since I’m extremely empathic,” she said. “That could’ve been me and my son.”
Deadliest recent shootings in Palm Beach County
June 2015: Greenacres grandmother Nilda Sheffield fatally shoots her daughter Elizabeth Flores and her daughter’s two children, 2-year-old Sofia Chiddo, and 7-year-old Xavier Neff.
September 2010: Patrick Dell burst into his estranged wife’s home in Riviera Beach and kills Natasha Whyte-Dell and four of her seven children. A fifth child was shot in the neck but survived.
January 2010: Wellington mortgage broker Neal Jacobson fatally shoots his wife and 7-year-old twin sons, Eric and Joshua.
November 2009: Paul Michael Merhige kills four family members at a Thanksgiving dinner in Jupiter.
September 2002: Michael Roman executes five family members in a Lake Worth home.
jpacenti@pbpost.com
@jpacenti
Rharper@pbpost.com
@rachida_harper
jwhigham@pbpost.com
@JuliusWhigham
Comments