Families question busing policy

LA PLATA, Md. — If you happened to be riding an eastbound Greyhound bus out of Las Vegas in late February, you might have encountered Nicholas Attilio Caroleo.

You probably would remember him.

Caroleo, a former light-heavyweight professional boxer with a nose that is slightly off-kilter, had just been released from RawsonNeal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas, one of hundreds of mentally ill people the facility has discharged to buses headed out of Nevada in recent years.

With a history of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, a long rap sheet of misdemeanor offenses and a roiling anger in his gut, Caroleo had a one-way ticket to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., courtesy of Nevada’s largest state psychiatric hospital.

It is unclear whether Caroleo, 32, ever made it to his destination, where relatives said he had no family or friends but has lived on the streets.

Before he left Las Vegas, he let a former girlfriend know he was on the move, sending a text message and photo of himself sitting at the Greyhound station. Shaggy and bearded, he is showing off his bus schedule and discharge papers from Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services, the state agency that oversees Rawson-Neal.

“You will repent!!!” his text warns. “I gotta ticket.”

Alarmed, the girlfriend forwarded the message to Caroleo’s parents, Pat and Robert, who live in this quaint Maryland town of 9,000 not far from Washington. Within hours, they sought a court order barring their son from contacting them.

“Nicholas has threatened to kill myself, my husband, himself and my grandchildren,” Pat Caroleo told the court in a written statement. “He is en route from Las Vegas by bus.”

Asked whether he had access to a firearm, she answered, “Do not have any idea.”

The Charles County court granted the protective order.

A few days later Nicholas’ parents got a call from an Atlanta mental hospital where he had been admitted. Later, they received a series of chilling phone and text messages from him. “You’ll be dead by summer,” one of them said.

“They put people like him on a