Post by Logan on Jun 22, 2016 23:41:22 GMT -6
Sick Pay: How War Vets Who Land in Texas State Hospitals Risk Losing Everything
On May 27, 2011, Adan Castañeda took a taxi from San Antonio to his parents’ Hill Country home. Once the cab drove off, Castañeda pulled out a pistol.
Since returning from war three years earlier, Castañeda had cycled in an out of the Audie L. Murphy Memorial VA Hospital’s psychiatric ward, stuck in a pattern of emergency treatment and release. Weeks prior, his mother had once again tried to commit him to the psych ward after his delusions took on a darker tone – only this time doctors said they couldn’t take him (medical records indicate Castañeda “knew how to answer [doctors’] questions so that he wouldn’t be committed”).
Just before 4 o’clock that morning, Castañeda raised his gun, emptied a clip into his parents’ two-story home, reloaded and then kept shooting. Minutes later, he was sluggish, near catatonic when police found him wandering the side of a nearby country road.
Charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, deadly conduct and two counts of attempted murder, Castañeda’s legal case stalled for three years as he bounced back and forth between solitary confinement at the Comal County jail and the North Texas State Hospital in Vernon, where doctors worked to make Castañeda competent to stand trial. Last year a judge declared Castañeda not guilty by reason of insanity. Instead of prison, the judge sent Castañeda to a state hospital for treatment and recovery.
Read more: www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2016/06/22/sick-pay-how-war-vets-who-land-in-texas-state-hospitals-risk-losing-everything
On May 27, 2011, Adan Castañeda took a taxi from San Antonio to his parents’ Hill Country home. Once the cab drove off, Castañeda pulled out a pistol.
Since returning from war three years earlier, Castañeda had cycled in an out of the Audie L. Murphy Memorial VA Hospital’s psychiatric ward, stuck in a pattern of emergency treatment and release. Weeks prior, his mother had once again tried to commit him to the psych ward after his delusions took on a darker tone – only this time doctors said they couldn’t take him (medical records indicate Castañeda “knew how to answer [doctors’] questions so that he wouldn’t be committed”).
Just before 4 o’clock that morning, Castañeda raised his gun, emptied a clip into his parents’ two-story home, reloaded and then kept shooting. Minutes later, he was sluggish, near catatonic when police found him wandering the side of a nearby country road.
Charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, deadly conduct and two counts of attempted murder, Castañeda’s legal case stalled for three years as he bounced back and forth between solitary confinement at the Comal County jail and the North Texas State Hospital in Vernon, where doctors worked to make Castañeda competent to stand trial. Last year a judge declared Castañeda not guilty by reason of insanity. Instead of prison, the judge sent Castañeda to a state hospital for treatment and recovery.
Read more: www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2016/06/22/sick-pay-how-war-vets-who-land-in-texas-state-hospitals-risk-losing-everything