Jun. 20—Two days before he was killed, Gabriel McNutt’s sister, 13-year-old Catherine, cried with him. Their father listened.

“She said, ‘Gabriel, I love you. You’re my best friend,'” Adam McNutt recalled. “And I could hear on the other side of the door: ‘I love you, too, Catherine.'”

Fifteen-year-old Gabriel struggled with tonic-clonic seizures for years. When he woke from episodes, he might find himself in a field, a creek or a hospital. The seizures wore on him over time — he also developed non-epileptic seizures caused by stress and anxiety. He couldn’t ride a bike. He was home schooled. He was in and out of several health care facilities.

On Saturday afternoon, the McNutts, who live in Decatur, were visiting Adam’s parents in Athens for Father’s Day. Gabriel had gone five weeks with only one tonic-clonic seizure. Before that, he had spent the better part of three months in hospitals.

The year had been hard on the family with Gabriel increasingly showing suicidal signs. His parents had moved all their knives into their bedroom and locked them away.

At his grandparent’s house on Elles Drive, Gabriel’s behavior suddenly changed. Athens police responded to the residence for reports of a juvenile threatening family members with weapons at around 2:15 p.m.

According to Athens police, Gabriel threw knives at responding officers. His father said, at some point, Gabriel found a rifle in a closet.

“He had never loaded a gun in his life,” Adam McNutt said. “We actually don’t have any here. That rifle was given to my dad by my grandfather, and it hasn’t left that closet in over 20 years.”

When McNutt and an officer crossed the threshold of the room toward Gabriel, he said Gabriel fired a round over their heads. The officer fired back.

“I heard a pop go off,” said Leslie McNutt, Gabriel’s mother. “It was like a lighter pop. It was different than when the cops fired.”

Gabriel’s father and the officer rushed toward him to try to stop the bleeding.

“The cop was so broken,” Adam McNutt said. He said he put one hand on Gabriel’s wound and the other around the officer’s shoulder. “I said, ‘Don’t blame yourself. This is not your fault. It’s OK.'”

The McNutts are devout. They said God gave them a special love for the people of India. When Gabriel was 4 years old, they moved there for mission work.

“Our second day in India, he had a brain bleed,” Adam McNutt said. “We had to travel by car to another state to get him surgery. They had told us, even if he survives, he’ll probably be paralyzed and not able to speak. And like five days later, God just healed him completely. He was walking and talking.”

Gabriel suffered from arteriovenous malformations (AVMs), abnormal growths of tangled blood vessels that can cause seizures. Still, he seemed to have recovered since India — until December 2020.

“He and his sister were playing Nintendo Switch and he just fell over,” Adam McNutt said. “We thought he was playing, because Gabriel was such a goofball. He always was doing something to make people crack up.”

His parents soon realized it was a seizure. Around six months later Gabriel had radiation treatment and got put on “so many medicines,” his father said.

“They had to do radiation — he had already had brain surgery, and because of scar tissue and where it was, this was as good as we could do. It was OK for the first year aside from some very serious tonic-clonic seizures. And then after a year, just going through that, it developed into what’s called non-epileptic seizures.”

The constant seizures affected Gabriel’s mood and behavior. His parents took him to counseling for depression. In February, after years of damage caused by the episodes, his parents said Gabriel’s behavior escalated. They took him to several behavioral centers before they finally found some relief at Mountain View Hospital in Gadsden.

“The other places, he would stay for just over a week and then they’d send him home,” Leslie McNutt said. “He’d be home maybe two to three days, and then we’d have to start the process all over.

“Even when he was in these facilities, we would get a phone call once a night for 10 minutes, and he would say, ‘Mom, today I got to share my testimony in a large group; Mom, pray for this roommate, he’s struggling and he lets me pray over him.’ You know, even in those dark places, Gabriel was the light.”

Gabriel’s parents said they tried to get his neurologist in Birmingham to conduct brain scans.

“His neurologist brushed it off as strictly behavioral, and anyone who knows Gabriel knows that’s not him,” Adam McNutt said. “We were just fighting everyone. We were fighting everyone to get him what we knew he needed. But because we don’t have a piece of paper hanging behind a wall, we were brushed off.”

Mountain View Hospital kept Gabriel for almost a month. There, according to his family, his psychiatrist said the condition was physical. After his discharge, Gabriel went five weeks without another incident.

They were a good five weeks.

“These last five weeks, God gave it to us and said, ‘This is your time. Make the memories,'” Adam McNutt said.

“We really want Gabriel’s story to highlight the need for help with mental health in this state, because they just grab them up, feed them and house them and then kick them right back out. And it’s an endless cycle. It was for us. We turned over every stone we could turn over. This is a boy who the mental health field failed, miserably.”

Gabriel loved to be outside. He enjoyed soccer, basketball and football. When the seizures came and prevented him from riding his bike, his father said a friend and former coworker brought Gabriel a recumbent tricycle so he could ride with his siblings.

In addition to Catherine, Gabriel leaves behind Isaac, 8, and Adrian, 5. Adrian called his 6-foot-tall brother “Big Bubba.”

Saturday evening, the McNutts went to collect their children who had been brought from Athens to a friend’s house.

“It took us an hour to get them to the car from the living room,” Adam McNutt said. “When I got Adrian out there, he said, ‘Daddy, in the morning can we go to the graveyard and see Big Bubba?'”

His voice cracked.

“I said, ‘Not just yet, but we will.'”

Before Gabriel died, his father took him to see Christian-influenced rapper NF, also known as Nathan Feuerstein. They were 10 feet from the stage. The next day, they went to see Christian rock band Newsboys.

“We got to go on their tour bus and pray with the lead singer,” Adam McNutt said. “And then Friday, we got to go to Jack Allen (Recreation Complex), and we got a picture of the kids all there in the grass, their heads next to each other. That was the last picture of all four of them.”

The McNutts said they’ve had a lot of support from Decatur Fire & Rescue and Decatur police over the last three and a half years.

“So many of those guys came to know Gabriel,” Adam McNutt said. “We had an incident here a couple of times where several officers came, earlier this year, and they were just so patient and understanding. And they knew Gabriel. They knew then, and yesterday, that wasn’t the sweet boy that everyone else knows.”

Gabriel’s parents said one time, during a particularly bad seizure, a Decatur firefighter rode in the ambulance with Gabriel all the way to Huntsville Hospital.

“He has impacted so many,” Adam McNutt said. “We want to honor Gabriel, we want to remember him, and we want to make his life count for the love he had for people. Most of all he just loved sharing Jesus with people.”

Gabriel’s memorial service will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at Central Park Baptist Church. The family will receive visitors from 4-6 p.m. They said everyone is welcome. A private graveside service for the family will follow on Friday.

“We’re at peace,” said Leslie McNutt. “We’re going through the worst time of our lives. But we ultimately have peace knowing that Gabriel is fully restored now, and he’s with Jesus. And we’re going to get to see him again, so that gives us great comfort and peace.”

— david.gambino@decaturdaily.com or 256-340-2438.