‘I am very worried’
Family searches for man who fell ‘through the cracks’ on his way to Newport News group home
Annette Schofield just wants to find her brother.
She last spoke to 36-year-old Antoine Omar Wynn, on July 7. At the time, he was staying at the
Virginia Beach Psychiatric Center on First Colonial Road. Wynn had been badly beaten in 2005 at Virginia State University, suffered a traumatic brain injury and now suffers from schizophrenia, she said.
He’s been missing since Feb. 9, when Schofield says he was put in a cab by the psychiatric center and sent to a Newport News group home.
“I am very worried,” Schofield said.
Wynn is one of more than 215,000 Virginians with severe mental illness, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center, a mental health advocacy group based in Arlington.
Wynn’s case spotlights how mental health services in Virginia and elsewhere are often broken up between health care providers, usually because of funding issues, in ways that make it difficult or impossible for people to get the consistent care they need, said Elizabeth Hancq, director of research for the Treatment Advocacy Center. Wynn went missing the day he was moving to Newport News and being placed under the care of another provider. Hanq says that’s a common problem, and one that’s difficult to measure.
“Because the system is so fragmented, it’s just so easy for people to fall through the cracks. And this is just a tragic example of that, where someone literally was lost through one of these transfer points,” she said.
Newport News police sent out a press release on Feb. 12 saying Wynn had been missing for about three days. Schofield had no idea her brother was missing until she saw a Virginian-Pilot report about him.
Schofield and Wynn are from Portsmouth, and he’s a graduate of
I.C. Norcom High School. But she now lives in Florida, and she got back to Hampton Roads to search for her brother on Feb. 16, after a 12-hour drive.
Schofield recalled that when she moved to Florida in 2005, she wanted her brother to come with her, but he decided against it. Then he went to Virginia State University and suffered that beating.
Schofield said her grandmother couldn’t convince Wynn to go to the doctor.
“He had a broken nose,” she said. “His face was all bloody. From then on, he kind of deteriorated.”
Wynn used to call her and ask for money for hotel stays, and Schofield said she’d send it. He had also gotten into some legal trouble, so she used online court records to keep track of him.
“I would periodically look in the court system to see if my brother was in there because they pick him up a lot for trespassing,” she said.
Wynn had gone missing over the summer, but was quickly found by Portsmouth Police. He’d been under the care of the Virginia Beach Psychiatric Center and was staying at the Knights Inn on Lynnhaven Parkway.
He was detained for disturbing the peace on Jan. 21 in Virginia Beach for an incident that happened on Dec. 15, according to online court records. He was released on a summons. A hearing in the case in Virginia Beach General District Court is scheduled for Wednesday. His attorney in the case said he could not comment.
Wynn has had a number of run-ins with law enforcement in the past few years, including charges for felony assault and battery of a law enforcement officer, destruction of property, disorderly conduct and providing a false identity to a law enforcement officer.
The police department news release on Feb. 12 said Wynn had last been seen three days earlier around 1 p.m. on Jefferson Avenue in Newport News.
Since coming back, Schofield has spoken to a detective from the Newport News Police Department, as well as a caseworker from Jewish Family Service of Tidewater, which was given guardianship over her brother on Jan. 14.
Wynn’s caseworker with Jewish Family Service of Tidewater, Darryl Turner, said the Virginia Beach Community Services Board had run out of money to pay for his Knights Inn hotel room, Schofield said. She said she was told her brother refused to take a TB test and a COVID-19 test, so they were limited on where they could place him.
Schofield said Turner told her the plan on Feb. 9 was to send Wynn to a Newport News group home on Jefferson Avenue under the care of Jewish Family Service of Tidewater.
She said the Virginia Beach Psychiatric Center put her brother in a cab “with a paper bag” on Feb. 9 and sent him to the group home. Turner was waiting there for Wynn’s arrival, and Schofield said he gave her some details about what happened.
“Prior to going in the house, he saw somebody he knew, maybe he had some type of beef with them before and he didn’t want to go in the house for that reason,” Schofield recalled. “(Turner) tried to get him to come with him and then he said my brother got a little aggressive with him.”
Schofield said Turner called the police, who couldn’t detain him
without a court order or proof of guardianship. Turner went to get the court order while police kept an eye on her brother, and that’s when Wynn disappeared, his sister said.
Guardianships allow organizations to make financial and health care decisions for people deemed incapacitated and who have no family or caregivers.
Court documents show that Wynn receives $783 a month from social services. The order requires Jewish Family Service to keep in contact with Wynn and make sure his needs are met and he is taken care of. Schofield said she filed paperwork to transfer the guardianship to her on Feb. 19.
“I’m trying to get the guardianship transferred so I can get him the treatment he needs,” she said.
Prior to the guardianship being issued to Jewish Family Service, Schofield said no one contacted her or Wynn’s other family members who live in Hampton Roads.
The Virginia Beach Circuit Court document about Wynn’s case says that Wynn is single and “there are no other identifiable relatives known” to the Department of Human Services. The Virginia Beach Department of Human Services, which handles behavioral health and developmental services for the city, said it could not comment on the matter due to HIPAA and state confidentiality laws.
Kelly Burroughs, a spokeswoman from Jewish Family Service of Tidewater, also said she couldn’t comment on specific cases. She said people are placed under the care of a guardian when they are deemed to be “incapacitated” by the circuit court and when no other appropriate friend or family can care for them. “That process is not done overnight,” Burroughs wrote in an email. “It involves a court order — and a lot of evaluation. There are efforts made to locate appropriate family members or friends, and a guardian ad litum is assigned through the court to gather as much information as possible to present to the judge.”
The guardian ad litum, she said, acts on behalf of the person until a judge makes a final determination.
“Again, due to confidentiality, I cannot speak to what specific efforts were made, but I can assure that efforts are made before a case is adjudicated and a guardian assigned,” Burroughs wrote on Feb. 17.
She said organizations like hers are a last resort. She said they don’t solicit business, or go out and look for people to place under guardianships. Organizations like Jewish Family Service are court-appointed, she said.
The ideal outcome is for people to have friends or family who can take care of them instead.
“Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of people who can make that commitment,” she said. “Agencies like ours step in to take that place.”
The system for getting aid to people with mental illness is so divided that agencies like Jewish Family Service and the Virginia
Beach Psychiatric Center have a very difficult time keeping patients working with the same doctors and getting consistent treatment, Hanq said. In mental health treatment, the drugs and methods that work on one individual with a specific diagnosis don’t always work on another, she said.
“It’s important to keep them engaged with the same treatment providers who know an individual’s case and family, to build up a system that is more continuous,” Hanq said.
Schofield said her brother was a sweet boy before he was assaulted in 2005, and was doing fine.
He lived with her in Hampton Roads on more than one occasion, including during his senior year of high school and briefly after. He previously had jobs at the mall and with a temp agency she helped manage in Chesapeake.
Even after his mental health struggles began, she said, he’d sometimes remember things, and ask about what they used to do together. “I can’t really say anymore because I just feel like the times that I have talked to him, he is not the same,” Schofield said.
Wynn’s family is looking for him near the group home on Jefferson Avenue in Newport News and the Knights Inn on Lynnhaven Parkway where he once lived.
Someone said they saw him Tuesday, his sister said. He was last seen wearing gray sweatpants, long blue socks, a white T-shirt and flipflops, his sister said.
Anyone who sees him should call Newport News Emergency Communications at 757—247— 2500.