Traverse City Walmart Stabbing Suspect Pleads Insanity, Case Moves to Probate Court

Bradford Gille, the 43-year-old accused of stabbing 11 people at a Traverse City-area Walmart last year, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity when he appeared in court Tuesday, formally closing the criminal case against him even as his confinement is only beginning. Gille waived his preliminary examination at Traverse City District Court, and he will now be committed to Michigan's Center for Forensic Psychiatry for at least 60 days for evaluation. Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Noelle Moeggenberg said the criminal case is over, according to The Detroit News. Under Michigan's Mental Health Code, MCL 330.2050, a defendant acquitted by reason of insanity must undergo up to 60 days of evaluation at the forensic center to determine whether court-ordered involuntary hospitalization is warranted, a process that will shift oversight of Gille's case from the criminal court to probate court once a commitment petition is completed. Moeggenberg said she considers it highly unlikely that Gille would ever be released into a non-secure environment given the nature of his offense, a position that aligns with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services' NGRI Committee, which will oversee his treatment going forward under standing state guidelines for insanity acquittees. Gille stabbed 11 people, ranging in age from 29 to 84, with a folding knife bearing a 3.5-inch blade in the parking lot of a Traverse City-area Walmart on July 26, 2025. Shoppers stopped and subdued him before deputies arrived; as reported by the Associated Press, Marine veteran Matthew Kolakowski noticed Gille stabbing a woman outside the checkout area and rammed him with a shopping cart, while another shopper held Gille at gunpoint until deputies reached the scene roughly three minutes later. All 11 victims survived, and eight were discharged from Munson Medical Center within days of the attack, per earlier Hoodline reporting. The eldest victim, an 84-year-old woman, publicly expressed pity for Gille's unmanaged mental illness in the days that followed. Moeggenberg charged Gille with one count of terrorism and 11 counts of attempted murder, invoking Michigan's rarely used 2002 anti-terrorism statute on the theory that the random attack was meant to intimidate the broader community and alter local public life. Enacted after September 11, the state terrorism law carries a maximum sentence of life in prison but is seldom filed in county criminal courts, according to the Associated Press. Gille has a rap sheet spanning roughly two decades that includes arrests for violent crimes, and he has struggled with serious mental health issues including paranoid schizophrenia. Court records show that in 2016, he broke into a grave at Greenwood Cemetery in Petoskey using a shovel and sledgehammer while in the grip of delusions that he was the Antichrist and that his living father was buried inside; he was charged at the time with disinterring and mutilating dead bodies and destroying tombs, an incident that also ended in an insanity disposition rather than prison. Records show at least four petitions for Gille's involuntary psychiatric commitment were filed in Emmet and Presque Isle counties since 2004. Days before the Walmart attack, on July 25, 2025, Emmet County officials obtained a court order for his protective custody and evaluation but were unable to locate him. His mother, Beverly Gille, said her son had struggled with mental illness for nearly three decades without continuous care, and his brother Shane told Bridge Michigan that Bradford's severe mental health issues began at age 15 following a severe drug reaction, and that the family spent 28 years asking authorities for long-term institutional placement. After his arrest, Judge Michael Stepka found Gille incompetent to stand trial in August 2025 and ordered him to continue treatment at the forensic center. He was later found competent to stand trial in May 2026, clearing the way for Tuesday's plea. Defendants must be found competent to understand court proceedings before any plea can be accepted, and Moeggenberg said the court found Gille mentally ill and unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or conform his conduct to the law — the legal standard behind an insanity acquittal. Gille's case has renewed attention on Michigan's shrinking capacity to treat serious mental illness. According to 2023 data from the Treatment Advocacy Center, the state has only 5 state psychiatric hospital beds per 100,000 residents, placing it among the bottom five states nationally and far short of the 50-beds-per-100,000 benchmark generally considered minimally adequate. Between 1997 and 2015, Michigan closed a large share of its state psychiatric hospitals, ranking second nationally in hospital closures. Northern Michigan has been identified as the state's most underserved region for psychiatric beds, according to an October 2025 report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness - Grand Traverse, which noted that local patients in crisis are sometimes forced to travel up to five hours away for care. Local advocates have proposed building a dedicated regional mental health campus to close that gap. For now, Gille's fate rests with the forensic evaluation process and the probate court that will eventually decide the terms of his long-term confinement. An NGRI disposition does not mean release; it triggers mandatory evaluation and, in most cases, extended institutional commitment overseen by the state's mental health authorities and the courts.