Friends of a man accused of shooting dozens at a convenience store in Friarsburg, North Dakota saw it coming a mile away, they said Thursday.
Brad James Cheltenham, a part-time janitor and full-time Illuminati and CIA history buff, was arrested last Wednesday after shooting at 36 customers at the Wiggle Pig bodega, a rampage that ended in the parking lot after police disabled Cheltenham with a shot to the leg.
“No surprise here,” says Cheltenham’s best friend Stu Ryerson. “Brad’s a friggin’ nut. He used to stand in my driveway and yell word salad at me–that I was a devil pinko with a bifurcated tail. I put up with it because he was good at basketball.”
Cheltenham’s one-time possible girlfriend also had long anticipated the day that she would see the man she dated for five hours at a Sonic drive-in being dragged across America’s TV screens and accused of a mass shooting as cops sprayed grapeshot at him and gas spewed all over the ground.
“File this under ‘Totally expected,’” she said. “I remember when I first met him at the airport. He had screamed at the desk clerk that he was going to miss his connecting flight, and what should have been grumbling turned into something like a grand mal seizure and he took a swing at the poor woman and pretty soon he was in the anti-terrorist holding tank. Dunno why I agreed to go on a date with him. He knew a lot about Dostoevsky.”
Cheltenham grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis and tried to attend community college there but was thrown out because “everybody knew the kid was going to go postal someday,” said the college’s vice provost, Derek Jamesian. “We got our new security cameras just for him.”
Cheltenham’s mother ran a small book store in Fargo and his father was a retired doctor who sold medical supplies.
“Yep, we knew he’d do this someday,” his now remarried mother Iris Flotsky said. “I love my son, but when you look in his eyes for two seconds, you just realize he was born without a soul. I wish you could find that out on an amniocentesis, but you can’t.”
His father, Joe P. Cheltenham, agreed: “I’d like to tell you it was his upbringing, but really the kid was sui generis, neither fish nor fowl, straight from the depths of hell Belial and Molloch wrapped into one. I think after talking to Brad for a few minutes, you might let us off the hook.”
The alleged shooter says he went on his rampage to alert people to the control government has on sans serif fonts in textbooks and also because a store clerk disrespected him a long time ago.
Friend Blake McNulty remembers going to a theme park with Cheltenham once and turned in shock when his friend started screaming at a funfair employee over how much each dart cost at the “Balloon and Dart” game.
“Brad started screeching that the game ‘was rig’ and then stuff started coming out of his mouth, and I think a bit of pus from his ears. Later he said he was fine, he was just in a bad mood right then.”
Cheltenham himself said after the shooting, “You are all very into yourselves and everything is about you. I will show you how things are also about me. Bozzle bozzle bozzle bozzle.”
