How Nasire Best went from high-school athlete and Amazon worker to White House shooter

The 21-year-old Maryland man killed by federal agents as he opened fire at a White House checkpoint Saturday was a former high-school athlete and Amazon driver before his mental health deteriorated and his worsening delusions of grandeur alienated close friends and family.

Nasire Best was on the track team at Dundalk High School a few miles outside Baltimore, where he graduated in 2023, according to The Banner, which spoke to friends and former teammates about his descent into madness.

A fellow track-team member who asked to remain anonymous said Best had “never been an aggressive person,” describing him as a “very energetic” and “light-hearted” person who “believed he could achieve great things if he put his mind to it.”

The first overt troubling sign of Best losing control came last year as he was evicted from his apartment for failing to pay rent — and didn’t even bother showing up for the court proceedings, according to legal records viewed by the outlet.

The teammate said Best had a job but was obviously grappling with mental health-struggles and had become increasingly “irritable,” leading to the dissolution of the friendship.

Jerome Patterson, who also ran track with Best, described himself as the gunman’s closest friend — saying the duo worked together at Amazon after graduation.

It was during this period that Best’s grasp of reality noticeably began to slip to those closest to him.

“We both worked alongside each other sitting and chatting every day, he came to me about everything, and everything was fine until randomly he started talking about being in control of people and reality and how he could tap into a different frequency and hear and peep things that we couldn’t,” Patterson told the outlet.

Patterson said that before long Best, started believing he was God, which he said prompted him to quit the job at Amazon.

“He eventually blocked and stopped talking to his closest friends and disappeared,” Patterson said, claiming that Best was also estranged from his family.

After Saturday’s shooting, a source told The Post that Best was a mentally troubled individual who was known to the Secret Service for acting strangely and loitering around the White House grounds.

In June, the agency had sought to have him involuntarily committed after he blocked a vehicle attempting to enter the grounds of the White House.

In one incident July 10, Best claimed to be Jesus Christ and said he wanted to get arrested, according to court records of the incident.

He was taken into custody but released by a DC judge on the condition he keep his distance from the White House.

Best failed to show up for his next court appearance and was wanted for arrest ever since.

On Saturday, he fired several shots outside a White House gate, wounding two bystanders before federal agents took him down in a hail of bullets.