Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Safety net failed troubled veteran
Santiago slipped through cracks of Alaska gun culture
ANCHORAGE — Life in Alaska — with its vast wilderness, fierce independence and gun culture — was exactly what accused airport killer Esteban Santiago did not need.
It enabled an obviously troubled person to move almost invisibly through daily life. He slipped through the social safety nets that were supposed to help him and past the authorities that could have disarmed him and prevented him from landing in Fort Lauderdale with a 9mm pistol and mayhem on his mind.
Despite a November admission to a state-run psychiatric hospital after telling FBI agents in Anchorage he was hearing voices commanding him to watch Islamic State videos, and a domestic
violence case against him — two things that can trigger the loss of the right to own a gun — he was allowed to keep a firearm.
Doctors released him after evaluating him for several days.
In March, Santiago pleaded no contest to a domestic violence charge and entered a program that would have kept a conviction off his record if he had stayed out of trouble for a year, paid his fees and attended mandatory anger management classes. But Alaska law did not require him to surrender his firearms while he satisfied the requirements.
Anchorage Police have refused to release detailed records tracking multiple interactions with officers following that arrest, and it remains unclear whether firearms were involved in the other incidents. Officers returned a gun confiscated from his automobile during the meeting with FBI agents. They have insisted that they had no legal reason to keep it from him and have declined to say whether it was the same firearm used in the attack at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
And although he was in the Alaska National Guard for nearly two years, until he was involuntarily discharged in August for unknown reasons, it doesn’t appear that superiors noticed his deteriorating mental condition or sought help for him.
Santiago, 26, remains in federal custody at the Broward County Main Jail, accused of killing five and wounding six at the airport on Jan. 6.
The Guard and the VA
Kurt P. Leffler II, a former sergeant in the same brigade as Santiago, didn’t know him. He said, however, that “structural” issues beyond the Alaska Guard’s control might have prevented commanders from potentially pinpointing the struggling soldier’s problems.
“The Alaska National Guard is spread out all over the state. You can have detachments where soldiers are hundreds of miles away from their officers. Do they see their soldiers often? They don’t. Plain and simple,” said Leffler, who spent 11 years in the U.S. Army Reserves, the active-duty Army and the Guard before recently requesting and receiving an honorable discharge.
Military officials refuse to say whether Santiago’s chain of command noticed his increasingly bizarre behavior and tried to get him help — or turned him away. Santiago was enlisted in the Alaska Army National Guard from November 2014 until he was involuntarily separated in August, according to military records.
Santiago’s headquarters was about 250 miles north at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks. The Sun Sentinel contacted Santiago’s former chain of command. The non-commissioned officer in charge of his section lives in Wasilla, about an hour’s drive north of Anchorage, and his former commanding officer lives in Fairbanks.
Neither returned multiple messages, and it’s unclear how often they saw him.
There’s little doubt that Santiago served honorably in Iraq. His awards include the Army Commendation Medal, the Combat Action Badge and the Good Conduct Medal.
Relatives say he returned from Iraq a changed man.
Federal officials have refused to say whether the former soldier in both the Puerto Rico and Alaska Army National Guard sought help from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs but indicate he was not drawing benefits shortly before the rampage.
It’s not unusual for troubled vets to forgo seeking mental health treatment from the VA, experts say.
Attorney and associate professor Stacey-Rae Simcox, director of the Veterans Advocacy Clinic at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, said some of the VA’s policies and past behavior make vets wary of seeking help for mental health problems.
For example, Simcox represented a veteran in 2004 whose name ended up in the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Those in the system are prohibited from obtaining firearms.
Simcox said the VA had determined that her client needed help to manage his finances and therefore declared him mentally incompetent. Tens of thousands of veterans turned out to be in the same situation, she said, due to the VA’s policy.
“Things like this create a culture of veterans not trusting the VA,” Simcox said. “Just because you can’t pay your bills on time, are they going to take away your rights to own a firearm?”
Shawn Gourley, cofounder of the Indianabased nonprofit Military With PTSD, said that it’s “a very complex issue,” one that needs more research.
“There are veterans who aren’t getting the mental health care that they need because they believe if they ask for it the court or an agency will take their guns. At the same time, guns might be important parts of their lives. Something we’ve looked at is maybe changing it around. If you’re a veteran and you’ve sought help and you’re getting treatment, maybe [clinicians] should think twice about their policies and not take a gun away.”
Other support networks
If Santiago had been a joiner, he might have found some comfort at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10252 — the “All American Post,” as it’s nicknamed. But VFW and other veteran service organizations in the region said Santiago never sought their aid.
“Everyone has been talking about Santiago, but he never came in here. We only know what we read in the paper,” said Willie Stovall, a longtime member of the post.
Anchorage is a military town that understands the needs of veterans, probably because there are so many of them, Stovall and other former military members said.
One out of every 10 Anchorage resident is a military veteran — a rate of uniformed service that’s about a third higher than the national average, according to the U.S. Census.
Stovall and other veterans said that if Santiago sought help from them, they would have steered him to the VA’s new hospital near Elmendorf-Richardson. In its most recent inspection, it rated near the top of all VA facilities nationwide for its care of mentally ill former service members. . In Anchorage, there are only two choices for emergency mental health hospitalization: the VA or the state-run Alaska Psychiatric Institute, which everyone in Anchorage calls “API.”
Citing health privacy laws, three top state officials would neither confirm nor deny that Santiago was treated at API, but his relatives said he spent several days in the hospital after an initial screening at Anchorage’s Providence Medical Center and was then released.
Under a contract with the state, Providence acts as a “single point of entry” for psychiatric triage in the state’s largest city.
In the fiscal year that ended in October, 4,504 Anchorage residents were screened at Providence, about one out of every 66 citizens.
A facility with 80 beds, API took in 1,450 of those screened for an extended hold for evaluation and care. This is what Santiago’s relatives say he underwent at API.
It remains unclear whether any physician diagnosed Santiago’s condition or asked him to voluntarily remain longer than the three-day stay at API for treatment.
State officials said that the vast majority of patients who require long-term care volunteer for further treatment at API. Only 77 patients at API last year were involuntarily committed for long-term care.
Although police will seize a weapon carried by someone suspected of being mentally ill and API staffers search for firearms and other contraband when patients arrive there, those sent home after a brief screening retain their gun rights, according to Randall P. Burns, director of the Division of Behavioral Health for Alaska’s Department of Health and Human Services in Anchorage.
Without a judge declaring Santiago mentally disabled, Alaska law protected his right to own firearms and purchase ammunition.
But even without that determination, Providence and API must develop comprehensive treatment plans for all patients before they exit the facilities, according to Alaska Department of Health and Social Services documents provided to the Sun Sentinel.
Administrators also must coordinate services with other providers in the community and give them appropriate information to ensure a continuity of care, the regulations state.
Burns said that if an institution fails to do that, it could trigger a mandatory internal review to figure out what went wrong and how it can be fixed in the future, but those incidents are “very rare.”
A gun culture
Dealing with mentally ill people who possess firearms is a common problem in Alaska, partly because so many homes have guns in them.
A 2010 report by the University of Alaska at Anchorage estimated that nearly 53 percent of Anchorage households possess a firearm — 17 percent higher than the national average.
Rick Ford, one of Santiago’s neighbors and a veteran of the National Guard, believes the FBI and Anchorage Police Department did their jobs. They sent him for a psychiatric evaluation, and that’s where he believes the social safety net failed.
For strong gun rights advocates like Ford, it appears that the real lesson to learn here is that the mentally ill should not have access to firearms. He questions whether state mental health officials “should’ve done a more thorough evaluation of this guy.”
“They should’ve held on to him longer and really addressed his issues — whether it was to get some medication into him to balance him out or to keep him safe and locked away to where he couldn’t hurt himself or others. Like he did,” Ford said.