WEST TISBURY — Jared Ravizza stood out on Martha’s Vineyard, even among the island’s more ostentatious visitors. Standing 6 feet, with a surfer’s build, and long hair dyed blond, he was known initially for apparent tall tales of mixing with Hollywood A-listers, running a business in Los Angeles, and working as a model. But his seemingly abrupt mental deterioration — and an alleged attack on his father in April — stoked concern among those around him in the months before the chaos on Saturday, in which he is accused of stabbing six people in two separate incidents, and is a suspect in a third, the death of his roommate in Deep River, Conn.
Police in West Tisbury said they sought to have Ravizza detained on a mental-health hold after the attack, but the local hospital declined. On Saturday, after allegedly stabbing four girls at a Braintree movie theater, then attacking two workers at a McDonald’s in Plymouth, Ravizza was arrested following a State Police pursuit that ended only after he lost control of his Porsche SUV and crashed in Sandwich. Officers used tasers to help take him into custody, records showed.
Now as the 26-year-old undergoes a court-ordered mental health evaluation in Bridgewater State Hospital, Ravizza’s increasingly erratic behavior — described by islanders and documented in police reports — has raised questions whether anything could have prevented the violence. West Tisbury police were called to the Vineyard home in the early morning of.