NEW YORK _ Long before he became a "domestic terrorist," allegedly attacking Jews with a machete in Monsey and penning a journal filled with anti-Semitic scribblings, Grafton Thomas was a normal youngster with a strict mother who tried to keep him out of trouble, friends said Monday.
Thomas, 37, was a big kid, played football and had big dreams of going pro, the friends said. His athletic resume included school games, recreation leagues, flag football tournaments and two years of college football as a 232-pound running back at William Paterson University in New Jersey.
"He had no anti-Semitic views," said one friend who did not want to be identified, and who knew Thomas and his mother before they moved from Brooklyn. "All he knew was his friends and football."
Friends said Thomas' hard-working mother maintained a strict household _ and insisted Thomas tow the line. When he was around 10, his mother was working a day job and going to nursing school at night because she wanted to get him out of public housing and into a better living situation, they said.
"She was always on top of her kid and she wanted her kid not to go down the wrong road," the friend said.
"She was always on of his case to make sure he did things right. He wasn't like a lot of the guys that we grew up with down the block who were all in the streets. He hung out here at home and we all played Nintendo 64 and video games all the time. That was our thing. We weren't going out."
Former friends speculated that drug use might have contributed to what Thomas' family said was a history of mental illness.
"Grafton Thomas has a long history of mental illness and hospitalizations," the family said in a statement released by Thomas' lawyer. "He has no history of like violent acts and no convictions for any crime. He has no known history of anti-Semitism and was raised in a home which embraced and respected all religions and races. He is not a member of any hate groups."
Friends from Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood said they were shocked at the Monsey attack.
"He seemed perfectly normal to me," said another childhood friend, who also did not want to be identified. "We grew up as regular kids. I read the article and I was in shock because it doesn't seem like it was his personality. It doesn't even look like him."
