ELIZABETHTOWN — The Bladen County Sheriff’s Office has charged MacKenzie Brisson with three counts of assault on a government official with a firearm after Tuesday’s six-hour standoff in Dublin.
Brisson, 20, will be remanded to the Bladen County Detention Center under a $1.5 million bond.
The incident began shortly before noon on Tuesday when Brisson and his grandfather, Nelson Brisson, reportedly had a heated exchange in their home near the intersection of N.C. 410 and Paul Brisson Road — just north of Bladen Community College and West Bladen High.
Nelson Brisson called the Sheriff’s Office requesting help, saying his grandson was “depressed and acting erratic.” It has been reported that MacKenzie Brisson’s girlfriend had broken up with him recently and, the day before the incident, he had gone to a doctor and been given 60 pills of an unknown medication. Most of those pills were missing by Tuesday.
MacKenzie Brisson then barricaded himself inside the residence with a number of weapons available.
When law enforcement officers arrived, Brisson fired shots inside and out of the home. A SWAT team from Fayetteville was brought to the scene in an effort to negotiate Brisson’s surrender, but he did not respond throughout the afternoon. A robot was dispatched into the residence, and law enforcement could see that the home has been severely damaged — but they could not see Brisson.
Sheriff Jim McVicker told the media during a late-afternoon press conference there had been no movement or sighting of Brisson in the home since about 3 p.m., and that they planned to release a small amount of CS gas into the home in an effort to entice Brisson to come out.
It didn’t work.
Once the gas was allowed to do its job, with no results, officers entered the residence and meticulously searched room-by-room. Brisson was eventually found hiding in a pickup truck in the garage.
“A bad day turned into a good day,” McVicker said shortly after. “Nobody has been hurt.”
He added that, once Brisson was found, became irate and did a lot of hollering. Brisson was taken to the hospital for a thorough checkup and evaluation. Once he was deemed physically healthy, he was charged with the crime.
McKenzie Brisson is a graduate of West Bladen High, where he was a member of the school’s hunter safety competition team — which competed in archery, skeet and rifle challenges. His mother was a teacher at West Bladen, he had a family member who was a Bladen County sheriff’s deputy and his grandfather’s brother, William Brisson, is an longtime N.C. representative.
The Sheriff’s Office was assisted in the incident by the N.C. Highway Patrol, Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office,, State Bureau of Investigation as well as local law enforcement and EMS units.
Students at the community college were on lockdown during the early stages of the incident, while West Bladen High and Dublin Primary lifted a precautionary shelter-in-places at about 2:50 p.m. Tuesday.