‘Fix it’: Councillor wants answers after another patient escapes
escape of two patients within nine days of each other from Hamilton’s mental health hospital shows the delicate balance between protecting the public and providing treatment to those found not criminally responsible for serious crimes.
“I feel they have let the community down,” Coun. Terry Whitehead said about St. Joseph’s Healthcare, which runs the West 5th campus in his west Mountain ward and where the forensic unit is housed.
“I have real concerns about what is taking place here and I want to make damn sure that we fix it,” said the Ward 8 councillor on Thursday. “I find it very disconcerting.”
Jason Murray was still missing as of Thursday night after bolting from two staff supervising him on the grounds, jumping a fence and running into the woods around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. Police spent Thursday looking for the 38-year-old North Bay man on the escarpment and then on the rail trail. Syna Lorn walked away from the hospital while on an unsupervised grounds pass June 4. The 33-yearold Hamilton man was missing for more than 24 hours before calling hospital staff to come back.
“We exercise enormous care and a lot of vigilance,” said Dr. Joe Ferencz, associate head of service of the forensic program at St. Joseph’s. “Can I guarantee that a person is never going to simply say, ‘Today I don’t want to come back.’ There is just no way for us to guarantee that.”
Whitehead wants the protocols improved to give the neighbourhood and broader community reassurance that patients deemed to be a significant risk to the public by the Ontario Review Board can’t easily escape. Both men were found by the board to be at substantial risk of committing a serious offence if they left the hospital. They both have schizophrenia, polysubstance use disorder and delusional beliefs.
“This is a treatment centre,” said Ferencz. “When their mental illnesses improve that means they should be able to begin to have some increasing opportunities to enjoy at least minimal freedoms.”
He says escapes are rare and both men had been on passes before without issues. However, a report by the board in January shows that on a staff-accompanied pass to Tim Hortons a year ago Murray intimidated and scared bystanders when he reThe ferred to people as child molesters. .
“I want to hold their feet to the fire,” Whitehead said. “They have a very high success rate when people complete the program ... The problem is the people escaping from the forensic unit have not completed the program. The fact they are breaking the rules would suggest they are not ready. It heightens anxiety in regards to the risk the community might face.”
Lorn has committed violent acts in the past, randomly attacking a cab driver with a machete in 2006 and slashing his roommate’s head with a samurai sword in 2017. Murray hasn’t been violent but was carrying two knives, a makeshift sword and screwdrivers when arrested in January, 2016. He’s implied he’s hunting people on some of the 268 videos posted to social media that show him following unsuspecting North Bay residents and police as well as recording the vehicle information of mental health providers. He has expressed hatred of Muslims, Germans and police. The board also notes Murray denies he has a mental illness and as of January was not taking any regular antipsychotic medications.