Regional Center patient in custody
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By Lori Pilger / Lincoln Journal Star
The state will investigate how a man who killed a stranger in Hastings in 2004 walked away from a supervised trip of Lincoln Regional Center patients to SouthPointe Pavilions on Thursday afternoon.
Jayson Garett, 30, was found near Hickman Friday morning and taken back to the Regional Center.
“Many of my constituents have contacted me questioning how something like this could have happened,” said Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln.
Like them, Fulton said he was alarmed by the incident. And as their representative and a parent, “I must demand answers from the Lincoln Regional Center.”
The state’s Division of Behavioral Health is working on it.
Dr. Scot Adams, the division director, said it’s too early to say if there will be repercussions for staff who lost track of Garett, but it is a possibility.
He said staff members who take patients on outings are supposed to keep the patients in sight. They have two-way radios and handcuffs, if the need arises.
Only patients who reach a certain level of progress are approved for such outings, Adams said.
A judge in Adams County approved Garett’s status, which allowed him to go out with one staff member and three other patients.
Adams said the division will gather information from patients and staff members on the outing, law enforcement and others involved.
And they’ll look at the incident to see what they can learn from what happened.
Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood said Garett was with three other patients and two staff members when he left the south doors of the SouthPointe Pavilions Barnes & Noble between 3 and 3:15 p.m.
A Regional Center staff member reported Garett missing at about 5:30 p.m., setting off a manhunt.
Lancaster County Sheriff’s deputies found him about 8:30 a.m. Friday nearly 12 miles away. Sheriff Terry Wagner said Burlington Northern railroad employees working south of Hickman spotted a man in a field and thought it looked suspicious.
Deputies took Garett into custody without incident.
Wagner said they returned him to the Regional Center immediately, after he turned down an offer to be taken to the hospital for exposure to the cold.
The sheriff said he took a call Friday from a woman who was shocked to learn a man who had been accused of stabbing a man 45 times with a steak knife, then sleeping in his bed, had walked the aisles at the bookstore where her daughter works.
In 2006, Garett was found not responsible by reason of insanity in the death of Daryl Peed, 45. An Adams County district judge sent Garett to the Regional Center.
The attorney who prosecuted Garett said she submitted a request on Friday to prevent him from walking away again.
And Adams County Attorney Donna Fegler Daiss said she’s asked a judge to suspend all of Garett’s privileges until a hearing on the incident. She said she hadn’t received word about her request but that a hearing tentatively is set for Feb. 6 in Hastings.
Whatever comes of the latest incident, Wagner said, he’d like the Regional Center to keep more recent pictures of patients on outings. In this case, they had a picture of a clean-shaven Garett, who now has a beard.
If patients do walk away, it’s imperative law enforcement have the tools immediately to help find them, he said.
“When you have somebody that’s mentally ill, dangerous to be just walking away and then to be out and about is a little disconcerting,” Wagner said. “I think a lot of citizens were upset about that.”
Lincoln Police Chief Tom Casady said he thinks people would be surprised to know how often regional Center patients are out in the community.
Erwin Charles Simants, who in 1975 killed six members of a Sutherland family, was at SouthPointe this week, too, he said.
Because of a judge’s order years ago, Lincoln police are notified when Simants leaves the center, where he’s going and how long he’ll be there, and they get notice when he returns, Casady said.
If the center loses someone with a history of violence, it’s important law enforcement is called right away, he said.
Adams said he understands an incident like this can scare people.
But, he said, such outings help patients regain and rebuild social skills and are an important part of the treatment.
And 99.9 percent or more of them are unremarkable and unnoticed by the public, Adams said.
He didn’t provide numbers but said scores of outings occur in a year’s time. This was the first time he could remember someone walking away in the year he’s been in his position.
Adams said he hopes the incident won’t cast aspersions on people living with mental illness who are “neighbors, sons, daughters and friends to all of us in the community. ”
Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. Cory Matteson and Hilary Kindschuh contributed to this story.
