Suspect in East Cambridge animal cruelty cases confirmed as dead by family and Middlesex DA
An image of Rashad Gober from a since deleted webpage.
Rashad Gober, who was awaiting trial on charges of animal cruelty, killed himself Sunday. The death was confirmed Tuesday by family in Georgia.
The mother of the suspect, Eureka Gober, said by phone that she was awaiting information beyond the barest facts of the death. “They haven’t told me anything,” she said.
Gober, 31, was arrested July 1 on suspicion of animal cruelty but released Aug. 10 wearing an ankle monitor, according to the clerk’s office at Cambridge District Court. Approval was granted at a hearing the previous day. (For unknown reasons, on Aug. 13 a clerk said that the conclusion of an Aug. 3 hearing had been to keep Gober in custody until jury selection Nov. 4.)
A psychological evaluation was a condition of Gober’s release, said Meghan Kelly, spokesperson for the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.
Gober died in Boston, Kelly said, and more information was awaited out of Suffolk County before the case around animal cruelty charges could be ended officially. A Cambridge District Court clerk on Tuesday still had Gober scheduled for a pretrial hearing Oct. 8.
Three cats were found tortured between March and May in Gober’s East Cambridge neighborhood; two survived. After a tip pointed to Gober’s involvement, police found evidence inside his home that included a BB gun; his phone’s Internet browser history showed searches including “cat cruelty video clips” and “how to lure neighborhood cats.” There were also searches suggesting concern over urges to be cruel, such as “desire to harm cats in adulthood,” “psychopathology of hurting animals” and “what if someone tortures an animal once.”
If convicted, Gober could have faced up to seven years in prison and a maximum fine of $5,000 on each of four animal cruelty charges; the crime is a felony in Massachusetts.
Gober grew up in South Carolina and attended Covenant College, a Christian liberal arts college in Georgia, where he majored in psychology. He came to Massachusetts to study at the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton with the goal of becoming a mental health and marriage counselor. He worked as a substitute teacher in the Hamilton-Wenham School District and as an executive assistant and events coordinator at several places, including for six months ending in early 2019 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
this is a tragedy all the way around. Animal torture and his personal demons. What a good-looking kid. Sad.
for whatever reason, cambridge has evolved as a magnet for psychologically troubled incidents. perhaps, as the greeks held, “a fish rots from the head first”.
seniors residing in public housing continue to be warehoused with the mentally ill…so are we to expect and await the body count to surpass the cat count?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak_MTXQALa0
Jeffery, I would hope that you would know better than to spread stigma about people with mental health issues. Let’s not overgeneralize from some unfortunate incidents. Instead, where there are problems, let’s address them constructively, as you seem to have been doing where you live.
I did not know Rashad Gober, but this article raises points to a lot of problems with how mental illness, especially the rarer cases with violent tendencies or sordid features, are handled in our society. One might think that someone studying in a seminary with the goal of becoming a counselor would be well positioned to seek help if he noticed signs of problems. Instead, Gober seems to have turned to the internet for help. While I don’t in any way excuse the crimes he was accused of, I’m concerned that he may not have seen any safe way of seeking help in person, due to our society’s emphasis on criminalizing violent behavior once it happens rather than working with at-risk people to prevent it. That may seem like blaming society instead of the alleged perpetrator, but I’m concerned about prevention, not blame. I’m naturally also wondering what more could have been done to prevent Gober’s suicide, since even as a layman I can see reasons in the article to have thought he might have been at risk.
As for public housing, I don’t know enough about the incidents you’re referring to in Cambridge to say much about Cambridge public housing specifically. However, I do know that a lack of resources and options elsewhere can cause a small number of horrendous placements of people with behavioral issues in public housing to overshadow the large number of successful placements. The solution would seem to try to come up with more resources and options, so that no housing development is ever treated as a landlord of last resort, which is a horrible experience for the tenants who are living there responsibly.
Really, Pete, a tragedy all the way around? The world has one fewer psychopath torturing animals to death. The tragedy lies in what he did to those innocent cats, not in the fact that he decided to end his contemptible existence, no matter how nice-looking you think he was. The world is better off without him.
“Nice-looking kid?” The guy’s 31 years old! No kid. And how does his looks figure into into this premeditated sadism? Did it make his victims feel less pain. He was quite an accomplished man, well educated, lots of advantages and well placed to victimize many weaker and less fortunate. Obviously, a sociopath who enjoyed inflicting pain on others who couldn’t fight back – not mentally ill, but able to pull off quite a pious demeanor. Criminalize violent behavior? Whaa! You think it should be rewarded. Who will care for the victims?