AUGUSTA, Maine — The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who fatally shot a Colombian man in Maine this week is an Army veteran with a long history of serious mental health struggles and violent behavior — and should never have been placed in a law enforcement role, several of his close relatives told the Associated Press.
David Brouillette, 37, has a pattern of terrifying conduct toward the women in his life, according to those relatives. They allege he physically attacked women over the years, and one family member shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he said he believed someone should have her throat slit.
The disturbing background raises serious questions about how carefully the Department of Homeland Security screens new recruits, particularly as the agency expanded its hiring to support President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.
At least ten people have died during encounters with immigration agents since Trump resumed office and launched the crackdown. Among them is 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national who was shot and killed by Brouillette on Monday while sitting in his car near his home in the coastal Maine city of Biddeford.
DHS has not publicly identified the officer involved in Durán Guerrero’s death. The agency has stated that the victim’s vehicle attempted to flee and that an officer fired his weapon out of concern for public safety.
Brouillette did not reply to text messages or an email requesting comment. Three relatives — including an ex-wife and his daughter — said they spoke with him following the shooting and that he told each of them he acted in self-defense.
When the AP contacted ICE for comment about Brouillette’s background and his involvement in Monday’s shooting, spokesperson Lauren Bis issued a statement saying, “We will never confirm or deny attempts to dox our law enforcement officers,” and added that “The ICE officer in question has nearly a decade of federal law enforcement experience with required training including use of force training.”
The White House directed all questions about the shooting and about Brouillette to ICE.
His ex-wife, Ashley Brouillette, told the AP that David informed her late last year that he had been hired by ICE. Given his lengthy history of psychiatric problems, she assumed he was experiencing a mental health episode and didn’t believe him — until videos from the shooting began appearing online this week.
Ashley Brouillette said she connected with her ex-husband through a Facebook audio call, during which he admitted he had killed Durán Guerrero. Their 18-year-old daughter, Madison Brouillette, also told the AP that her father called her Wednesday and told her directly that he had shot and killed Durán Guerrero.
David and Ashley Brouillette were high school sweethearts who married in 2007. She said she divorced him in 2009 after he became physically violent with her — behavior that began when she became pregnant with their daughter. She said he once threw boiling water at her while she was holding their child, an incident also described by her mother.
The abuse did not stop after the marriage ended, she said.
A check with the Maine Department of Public Safety found no criminal record for David Brouillette in the state. However, hundreds of family court documents obtained from the Augusta District Court clerk’s office paint a troubling picture spanning years. His second ex-wife — whom the AP is not naming due to her fear of retaliation — alleged in multiple requests for temporary protection orders that he stalked and harassed her and physically and verbally abused his daughter.
According to those filings, Brouillette tackled his teenage daughter and smashed spaghetti into her hair. During another incident, he dragged his daughter around the house while she cried. In a 2021 application for a temporary protective order on behalf of his teenage daughter — which a judge granted — his second ex-wife wrote: “Dave needs counseling or something for his PTSD & depression.”
In his own court filings, David Brouillette denied the allegations and accused his second ex-wife of slander.
His oldest daughter, Madison, said she personally witnessed her father’s volatility. “I watched my dad struggle a lot with a lot of things,” she told the AP. She recalled coming home from school one day to find him telling her he had been sitting on a tree stump with a gun pressed to his head.
“If you don’t really, truly take care of yourself, there’s no way you can protect other people. And with my dad, he never wanted to get help,” she said.
An immediate relative of Brouillette, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he was diagnosed with manic bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder as a child — a diagnosis Ashley Brouillette confirmed. The relative described him as “extremely mentally ill” and said he attempted suicide twice at age 12 and was hospitalized on multiple occasions. That relative said they have been estranged from him for years after cutting off contact out of fear he would harm them.
Brouillette grew up in Gardiner, a city of roughly 6,000 people located about 60 miles northwest of Biddeford, where Monday’s shooting took place. Relatives said he was drawn to law enforcement and the military from an early age. High school yearbook photos show him as a member of the school’s Naval Junior ROTC, and he wrote that he intended to attend college and become a police officer.
Military recruiters initially rejected him because of his mental health diagnoses, but encouraged him to stop taking his medications for a year and reapply — which he did, according to his immediate relative. He was eventually allowed to enlist.
Pentagon records show Brouillette joined the Maine Army National Guard in November 2007 as a chemical equipment repairer before switching to a medical logistics role. He served in the Guard until January 2010, when he enlisted in the regular Army as a human intelligence collector. He deployed to Afghanistan from May 2012 through February 2013 and was discharged from the Army as a sergeant in December 2015.
A 2009 article in the Kennebec Journal listed him as a private in the Maine Army National Guard’s 152nd Maintenance Company in Augusta.
His immediate relative believes the time spent in Afghanistan made his emotional problems significantly worse: “Afghanistan destroyed him — trained him to be a killing monster, a machine. They took someone who was extremely mentally ill and turned him into a killing machine.”
In March 2025, Brouillette passed a licensing exam to become a real estate sales agent. A Facebook post from Realty of Maine announced he would be working out of the firm’s Bangor office, noting that “David lives in Maine after retiring from the United States Army.” That post has since been removed, and Brouillette is no longer listed on the company’s website. Messages left for Realty of Maine were not returned.
Public records show that in March, the Maine agency responsible for child support matters filed a lien against him, suggesting he may have been expecting a permanent impairment or disability settlement.
Around the time he joined ICE in late 2025, Ashley Brouillette said he left her a three-minute voicemail mocking her for obtaining a restraining order against him. In the recording she shared with the AP, he repeatedly called her “disgusting” and suggested that she and the other women in her “bloodline” should die.
“And all of you should have your f——-g throats cut,” the voicemail said. “Yeah, you should. Am I threatening that I’m gonna do that? Nope. Nope. But do I think that you should have your f——-g throats cuts? Or should have had them cut? Yep.”
Ashley Brouillette said she had cut off all contact with him until this week, when his photo began circulating online. She then reached out to his current wife through Facebook, and the two spoke by phone. David Brouillette joined the call, and cellphone screenshots of the exchange she shared with the AP show he acknowledged fatally shooting Durán Guerrero.
“He was asking if I could tell them that he was a good person and not to talk about the abuse and stuff that I had endured well with him and he said that the most important thing is his character right now,” she said.
She said he told her he is currently in protective custody. When she asked why he did it, he told her it was a justified shooting. “The guy was trying to run him over with a car,” she said he explained.
His daughter Madison echoed that her father also told her the shooting was justified. “I don’t think he sees himself as a killer,” Madison Brouillette said. “I think he thinks that he genuinely did the right thing. All he said was that he did what he had to do. He said that he had to protect himself.”
