RALEIGH, N.C. -- Nearly a week into the new fiscal year, North Carolina lawmakers are struggling to balance the state's budget.

The mental health system could face a 30 percent cut. Right now, about 10 percent of all inmates have mental illness, and a conservative think tank in Raleigh thinks the proposed cuts will mean more untreated patients will end up in jail -- or worse, that the cuts could cost lives, like in the case of Derrick Gregory.

Gregory is a killer without apologies. He shot two employees at the Moe's Southwest Grill in Dilworth two years ago.

“No, I don't have regrets,” he told Eyewitness News reporter Mark Becker.

That became painfully clear as Eyewitness News sat down with him in the interview room at Central Prison in Raleigh, where he is beginning two life sentences for murdering the two managers who'd fired him from his job at the Moe's restaurant in Dilworth.

“You took two people from their families. Don't you regret that?” Becker asked.

“I don't feel no regret,” Gregory said.

But Gregory's attorneys told the judge the day that he pleaded guilty to those murders that he probably wouldn't be there, and the two men he killed might still be alive, if he'd gotten the psychological help he needed.

“Did the mental health system fail you?” Becker asked.

“Yes it did. It failed me completely,” Gregory said.

He said that failure started when he was abused at home and shuttled through a series of group homes that left him bitter but no better.

“They don't really help you. Basically they store you and make money off you. Then when you turn 18 and the state stops paying them money whether or not they've fixed your problems; they just pretty much kick you out the door,” Gregory said.

When he turned 18, Gregory hit the streets as a troubled and angry young man who finally had enough to get an apartment in Charlotte. But when he lost his job at Moe's, he saw it all coming apart.

“I was not going to be homeless in the streets for the rest of my life. Even if I had to kill two people to make sure that didn't happen, so be it,” he said. “(Now) I'm taken care of for the rest of my life and that's all I really wanted -- was to have a roof over my head and food in my stomach and a place to lay my head, and I got that. I got that.”

“Are there people like you out there?” Becker asked.

“Yes there is, there's a lot of kids and adults -- just basically a ticking time bomb,” he said.

Bob Ward is a public defender who says the community is spending less and less on programs for the mentally ill.

“I would say we're just not making mental health treatment a priority,” he said.

That’s something Mecklenburg County's Mental Health Department is hoping to address now with a new program to identify and help inmates with mental illnesses. “We want to get them out of jail to get them into treatment, so they get the support they need. So they don't go back to jail,” said director Grayce Crockett.

“Is this the place for you?” Becker asked Gregory.

“No, this is not the place for me,” he replied.

Gregory is angry, but he can't ignore the harsh reality of life in prison or why he's there.

“In the end, you, and you alone, pulled the trigger,” Becker said.

“That is true. But I believe if I had gotten the mental health help I needed, I may not have pulled the trigger,” Gregory said.

Mecklenburg County Mental Health is starting two programs to help people dealing with such issues. One is to help young people who age out of group homes or foster care, and another is to help inmates with a history of mental illness who are getting out of prison by helping them adjust to the world on the outside.

For more on mental health in Mecklenburg County, click here.