The news that broke on May 29, 2013, was shocking and immediately sparked international outrage. Mylene “May” de Leon, a 38-year-old Filipina part-time worker, had her life tragically ended by police officers inside a busy Costco store in Sterling, Virginia. The initial reports painted a damning picture: a small, 50-kilogram woman, allegedly armed with a bread knife, had been met with a hail of bullets from multiple officers.

To her family in the Philippines and a horrified public, it seemed like a clear and brutal case of excessive force. But as a thorough investigation unfolded, it revealed a hidden and far more complex tragedy—not of malice, but of a devastating mental health crisis that had been spiraling in silence.

To her friends and community in Virginia, May de Leon was a model citizen. She was a kind, happy, and deeply religious woman who attended church every Sunday. After moving to the U.S. years earlier, she worked hard, first at Victoria’s Secret and then at Costco, to build a life for herself. At the store, she was a familiar, smiling face, often tasked with handing out free samples to shoppers. There was nothing in her public demeanor to suggest the internal turmoil she was enduring.

The tragic events began on the afternoon of her final day at work. While managing a pizza sample cart, May’s behavior started to become erratic. According to her trainer and other employees, she began complaining loudly that the oven wasn’t working and that the pizza portions were too small. Her agitation grew, and she started shouting nonsensical questions at her coworkers.

When supervisors tried to intervene and calmly send her home, her paranoia intensified. She grabbed a 13-inch carving knife—not a bread knife, as was initially rumored—and a pair of scissors from the cart, and began waving them in the air. For 15 agonizing minutes, Costco staff tried to de-escalate the situation, but May was unresponsive. Fearing for the safety of the customers, they called 911.

Three sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene and repeatedly ordered May to drop the weapons. When she refused, one deputy attempted to use a Taser, but it malfunctioned. A second Taser shot hit her but failed to deliver an electrical charge and had no effect. The failed attempts seemed to enrage her further. Gripping the knife, she lunged toward two of the deputies. In a split-second, they responded with force. May did not survive the encounter.

The public outcry was immediate and fierce. But as investigators dug into May’s past, they uncovered a painful backstory that provided crucial context. May had been previously married to an American soldier in Ohio and had two sons. After a difficult divorce, she had suffered a severe psychotic break in 2012.

Alarming text messages she sent to her ex-husband, in which she invoked Satan and violence, prompted a welfare check. Police found her two young sons, then 7 and 10, hiding in a closet, terrified. May was hospitalized and diagnosed with “new onset psychosis,” likely triggered by the stress of her divorce and custody battle.

She was prescribed antipsychotic medication and, after months of therapy, her condition stabilized. But the court, acting in the best interest of the children, had awarded full custody to her ex-husband.

Determined to prove her stability and regain her sons, May moved to Virginia to start fresh, find a stable job, and build a new home. Tragically, in her effort to appear “normal” and in control, she had secretly stopped taking the medication that kept her psychosis at bay.

One hour before the incident at Costco, she had called her sister in the Philippines, sounding paranoid and saying she was uncomfortable with her coworkers. It was a clear sign that her illness had returned. The woman who brandished a knife at Costco was not the real May de Leon; she was a woman in the grips of a powerful and terrifying psychotic episode, unable to understand what was happening.

After a thorough two-month investigation, the commonwealth’s attorney concluded that the deputies had acted in justifiable self-defense and would not face criminal charges. The tragic case of Mylene de Leon was no longer a simple story of police action, but a devastating look at the failure of the mental healthcare system and the heartbreaking consequences of an unseen, untreated illness.