Hallucinating on prescription drugs, Biloxi man thought his kids were dead. Then he shot his wife.
A Mississippi man was sentenced to prison Thursday for killing his wife in what he described as a prescription drug-fueled hallucination.
Judge Christopher Schmidt sentenced Michael Edward Reis, originally of Bay St. Louis, to 40 years in prison with 15 years suspended and 25 to serve for second degree murder.
Reis appeared in court shackled in cuffs and dressed in a red and white jump suit. He confessed to shooting his wife, Jennifer Alvarado Reis, after taking “too many” of his pharmaceutical pills in March 2020.
The shooting occurred in the early morning hours at the couple’s home on Popp’s Ferry Road in Biloxi.
“I am incredibly sorry for what I have done,” Reis said in court before the sentence was handed down. “I started having hallucinations that my daughters were dead in the backyard.”
Reis flagged down police officers at the corner of Porter Avenue and Beach Boulevard on March 1, 2020, and confessed to shooting someone, prosecutors said.
Reis was said to have been speaking in random often confusing statements, but at one point told officers, “I just shot somebody.”
Officers went to his house and found his wife dead of a single gunshot wound to the chest. Her body was found on the kitchen floor.
Videos filmed by his wife before she was killed showed Reis frantically running around the house, digging in the dirt in the backyard asking where his children were.
Before sentencing, prosecutors read a statement from his wife’s son, Blake Sprouse.
“These are things that my family and I should never have been put through,” the statement read. “I can no longer call my mom and tell her all the great things in my life…she could not wait to be a grandma. Unfortunately, that opportunity was stolen from her, and she will never be able to hold her grandbaby.”
Reis had no prior felony convictions.
“It is another senseless homicide that derives from the abuse of drugs,” Schmidt said during sentencing. “And I don’t see that trajectory changing in our society.”
This story was originally published September 15, 2022 at 6:20 PM.