Something in Myron De'Shawn May snapped, turning the “quiet young man” into yet another campus shooter.

May, the 31-year-old Florida State University graduate identified as the gunman in early Thursday's shooting at the school's main library, was “in a state of crisis,” Tallahassee Police Chief Michael DeLeo told reporters.

Social media posts illustrate a series of hard times: Three aunts and an uncle died in recent months, he was undergoing financial hardships, and he felt “targeted” by unknown forces.

May, a lawyer, also joined a Facebook group called “Targeted Individuals International,” whose members are concerned with government surveillance and conspiracies.

Whatever pressure he felt – police had no motive – culminated in pistol shots and the wounding of at least three students before officers quickly confronted May and shot him dead. It wasn't clear how or when he acquired the .380-semiautomatic.

The victims had not been identified, though one was reported in critical condition and another was grazed by a bullet then treated and released.

According to a Las Cruces, New Mexico, police report last month, May was a subject of a harassment complaint after a former girlfriend called to report he came to her home uninvited and claimed police were bugging his house and car.

Danielle Nixon told police May recently developed “a severe mental disorder,” saying he “began to ramble and handed her a piece to a car and asked her to keep it because this was a camera that police had put in his vehicle.”

The report also said May recently quit his job and was on medication. He moved back to his hometown of Wewahitchka in the Florida Panhandle earlier this month.

State Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Fort Walton Beach Republican, tweeted Thursday that he knew May during his own undergraduate days at FSU.

Reached by phone, Gaetz said the two knew each other from campus politics, when they ran for student government positions in 2003 as part of the same student political party.

“He was a quiet young man, very service oriented,” Gaetz said.

Gaetz said he wound up serving as chief of staff and May was elected a student senator. That was the same year, he added, that then-FSU quarterback Chris Rix ran for student body vice-president.

May belonged to the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, Gaetz said, whose members wore jerseys with nicknames on the back.

“I always remember his: 'Sensitive Joe,'” he told the Tribune/Scripps Capital Bureau.

After college, May attended Texas Tech University's law school and passed the Texas bar in 2009. He later moved to New Mexico, where he worked with the Doña Ana County district attorney's office.

May's college roommate, Keith Jones of Kansas, told the Tallahassee Democrat that “there is more to his mental health (status) that may have caused some of this.”

May, with whom Jones kept in touch, was on medication and “used to see a therapist on a regular basis,” Jones told the Democrat. “He thought people were spying on him.”

May also complained in one August Facebook post, “Speaking from personally having experienced about 10 DWBs (Driving While Black), YOU DON'T GET MEDIA COVERAGE FOR IMPROPER POLICE CONDUCT UNLESS YOU DIE.”

He also quoted former Black Panther Party leader Bobby Seale, “The people have now come to realize that the only way to deal with the oppressor is to deal on our own terms and this was done,” who was referring to the murder of another Panther leader.

But Jones added that May “never had a gun in the 20 years that I've known him ... He wasn't in his right mind to shoot those people and then leave, knowing police would kill him.”

May was sure to have known, however, that his alma mater's library would be packed with students studying for midterm exams. As a volley of gunfire erupted in the lobby, young people throughout the building crouched on hands and knees, crawling for safety.

Gaby Hernandez, 18, said she and a friend tried to move toward the library's entrance, but “somebody was telling us, 'No, no, no. Don't go there,'” she said.

“The first thing I thought when I was running was, 'I'm going to die tonight, and I don't want to die like this,” said Hernandez, a freshman biology major and a graduate of Estero High School in Lee County.

A couple of floors up, Carlos Barreno, 22, a senior double-majoring in psychology and criminology, was with four friends in a windowless study room preparing for an exam when he received an FSU security alert on his cell phone.

Barreno, a 2011 Naples High graduate who arrived at the library around 9 p.m., hadn't heard the gunshots.

“My friend got a phone call and was told there was a shooting on campus,” he said.

They opened the door to the study room and saw library employees and a student on the phone with authorities getting direction on what to do.

They ended up gathering with a group of other students — including Hernandez — in between the book stacks. One of Barreno's friends took a cell phone video of the gathering that has gone viral.

Looking back, Barreno said the hardest thing for him was knowing he spent several hours studying and going out to the vending machines near the library's entrance the night before the shooting. He could have been a victim had May attacked a night earlier.

John Ehab, a sophomore from Tampa, said he was on the library's third floor when he heard multiple gunshots. “Everyone heard them,” he said.

People took cover in the book aisles to hide from the gunman in case he came onto the floor, Ehab said.

Later on Thursday, hundreds of students held a vigil on Landis Green.

Nixon, May's ex-girlfriend, told New Mexico police that he recently had taken a trip to Colorado for no reason and stayed up for five days straight. She also said Nixon had recently quit his job.

“He's just a boy our kids grew up with that we let stay in one of our guest houses for a while,” said Abigail Tauton, who runs the home in the Florida Panhandle. “He's moving back home from Texas and we were trying to help him get on his feet.”

She said she had known him since he was about 13 or 14 and that he ran cross country with her kids and stayed at her house a lot. She said he used to live with his grandmother after coming out of a “bad situation” with his parents.

“We're just all astounded. We had no idea that he would do something like this,” Taunton said. “Obviously, he was not in his right mind ... He was struggling, having decided that what he was doing out there was not good. He had some issues and just decided he'd come home. He was struggling, like we all do, financially and otherwise.”

Florida Gov. Rick Scott commended law enforcement's quick response while noting “we still have a lot of questions that are unanswered.”

“The police investigation will answer many of the questions we are asking today,” Scott said. “But, just like any tragedy, the ultimate question of 'why?' will never have an answer that satisfies those whose loved ones have been injured.”

Contributors to this report include Tribune reporters Liz Behrman and Jose Patino Girona, the Tribune/Scripps Capital Bureau's Matt Dixon