From the Times Herald-Record

Monticello - Long before the 12 hour standoff with police, William "Chris" Morris was a computer expert at Credit Suisse First Boston, handling millions of dollars in financial transactions. Now, he's charged with the attempted murder of a cop.

It began, his wife Jane Morris believes, with Lyme disease. "We had a very very good life together," she says. "Then he got very very sick."

The story spills out in torrents of grief and frustration. One night seven years ago, he awoke convulsing with a 103 degree fever. Bouts of fever continued. The fevers mystified doctors, until one did a spinal tap and diagnosed Lyme. Months of intravenous and oral antibiotics seemed to make him worse. She says he would come home from the doctor, unable to say what had happened. "He couldn't even put a sentence together for awhile," Jane Morris says. "This was a brilliant guy in a banking-investment firm."

He had headaches. He felt like his brain was misfiring. He lost his job. He went on disability. In 2003, they moved to Narrowsburg to start over, running a bed and breakfast and yoga studio. At first, Chris Morris seemed better. "Then he developed an interest in guns," Jane Morris said. "He seemed reckless with them. He seemed depressed. He's telling me he feels crazy. He's losing 20 pounds. Not getting out of bed. Not eating."

She told his doctor; the doctor said he wasn't depressed.
"Shortly after that, we find him in bed with a shotgun."

It was May, 2005. A deputy who was called to the house found him with the loaded gun, saying "the end is near". Police charged him with menacing, and he was jailed briefly. The charge was later dropped. By law, the court returned his guns. Jane Morris had to move her husband out of the house. "When the doctors weren't listening to me, I didn't know what to do," she said.

He stayed with friends for the next few months. She took him to his doctors, and they went to counseling. Friends said Chris thought he was a retired trooper, that he had served in Vietnam. He got into a car crash and ended up in a Scranton hospital. He thought they were slipping something into his food. His head felt disconnected.

His doctors put him on Vicodin and Valium. She asked the doctors not to prescribe them because of the guns. They told her to lock up the guns.

On February 2, 2006, Jane Morris says, her husband's behavior was erratic. She took away his handgun, went to a friend's house and called 911. When the police came, Chris Morris shot at the patrol car. The bullet just missed Deputy Cyrus Barnes.

Chris Morris' brother is a cop. Jane Morris' family are in law enforcement. She believes all of this happened because of either neurological effects of her husband's Lyme disease, or severe reactions to his medications.
"This is a matter of being failed by the medical profession," she says. "Prosecutors are talking 15 to 30 years in prison," she says. "These guys up here are seeing Chris as an evil person and he's not," she says. "He's sick."