“You have a right to be mentally ill”

When the man who made threats at DIA is healthy, he’s a friendly, compassionate guy who is deeply dedicated to his family, his sister said. He holds down well-paying remote-work positions and keeps up romantic relationships. But when he’s sick, he becomes a different person: he uses a different name, changes his phone number to the 202 area code and dresses differently. He’s rude and entitled, and he shuns his family in favor of spending time in bars with acquaintances.

Over the last two decades, he’s had regular episodes of mania and delusions that can last weeks or months, his sister said. Once, he went five years without having an episode, his longest healthy stretch. In early 2022, life was good for him: new job, likable colleagues, new girlfriend.

“And then in May, he said to my aunt, ‘Something is wrong, my eyes don’t look right, I’m afraid I’m going manic,’” his sister said. “And within days, he was no longer himself. And then it lasted for six months.”

When he’s delusional, her brother believes he’s part of some grand plan, she said. He’s in the FBI, or he has to stop a global war, or he has a mission against looming dangers that he can’t quite articulate.

In 2011, he tried to break into the White House to personally warn the president of danger he perceived. “That did not go well,” his sister said with a laugh. Her brother was arrested and charged with assaulting a police officer.

The episode that hit him in May was the longest he’s ever experienced, his sister said. Over the years, he’s figured out how to recognize the signs of an episode early and get himself medical help. And he tried to last summer, she said.

He checked himself into the emergency room more than a dozen times, she said. Got inpatient help 10 times. But he’d often complain of something unrelated to his true problem once he got there, like foot pain, and he’d refuse antipsychotic medications — the only treatment that pulls him back to being healthy, she said. He always left the hospital as delusional as he was when he walked in, she said.

“He says it’s like fighting with himself,” she said. “He’s trying to get help, and then he arrives at the institution and the manic and delusional part of him takes over and he’s like, ‘No, no, no. We’re not going to let them do that.’ … It’s a battle. And it’s a battle where the further he goes into the delusion it appears to be harder and harder to get help.”

Last summer, she watched her brother repeatedly refuse the only

effective treatments she said.

“You have a right to be mentally ill,” his sister said.

Colorado law allows a person to be detained for 72 hours against their will in order to receive mental health care — what’s known as an “M1 hold” — but only if the person presents an imminent danger to themselves or others due to a mental disorder, or is so sick they can’t feed or care for themselves.

The patient must be evaluated within 72 hours. At the end of that time, the patient can either agree to receive ongoing voluntary care, be released with no further treatment or authorities can begin the court process of certification to force the person to undergo additional involuntary treatment, including involuntary medication. A person who has been certified can be held in a medical facility for care, or be released for courtordered outpatient care, said Sylvester, the Uchealth psychiatrist.

In 2021, medical providers executed just under 36,700 72-hour M1 holds across Colorado, most for people who were considered a danger to themselves, according to statistics published by the Colorado Behavioral Health Administration.

In about 1,450 of those holds, the person was considered a danger to others, according to the records. That same year, medical providers reported 4,500 certifications for longer-term court-ordered involuntary treatment.

“The standard to put someone on an M1 hold is very specific; Colorado wants to make sure people’s rights are not being violated,” Sylvester said. “… There has to be a specific target with a specific timeline demonstrating imminent harm… Vague threats — ‘I’m angry, I feel like hurting people’ — that is concerning. Very concerning. But without a specific threat, I can’t do anything about that.”

The laws around involuntary holds and certification were tweaked in 2022, with phased changes set to take effect on July 1 and in 2025. The new laws will allow police officers to take a person to medical treatment instead of jail even if a warrant is out for the person’s arrest, increase the required paperwork around involuntary holds, and give the right to an attorney to people going through the court certification process, among numerous other procedural changes.

Lawmakers initially proposed allowing relatives to seek a court order for involuntary treatment for a family member, but that proposal was cut out of the final bill.

The sister of the man who made threats at DIA feels family members need better tools to help their loved one with mental illness.

“If the family could provide information that today he bought a gun, then he will be secured,” she said. “But when we say, ‘He has this history and he’s in a delusional state,’ they say, ‘I’m sorry, there is nothing we can do.’ …You’re accepting a community threat and deferring to the rights of the mentally ill person to make decisions when they’re not mentally well enough to make

for his

illness,

decisions. What can we do? Not to get all the way to involuntary commitment just willy-nilly, but the pendulum has swung too far right now for meaningful interventions by family or the medical community.”

She and her frustrated family members called hospitals, told them her brother’s medical history, and explained what medication he needs, but the hospitals couldn’t act without her brother’s consent. Sometimes medical staff assumed he was homeless, she said, or that he didn’t have family support.

For her brother, the right to be mentally ill meant he got sicker and sicker until he eventually made threats of mass violence.

“Would he actually get on a plane and cause issues?” she said. “Would he actually bring a bomb? I don’t think so. I think of it as a plea for help. But you can’t know that as law enforcement. And I can’t know that, because he’s off in a different world.”

At the time, there was nothing barring her brother from buying a real gun. Even when sick, he presents well to strangers and can pass as well, she said. After he made the threats at DIA, Denver police asked for and received a temporary extreme risk protection order under the state’s red flag law, which barred him from buying or possessing any guns for 10 days.

He wasn’t arrested for making threats, but was charged with petty theft for taking a limo to the airport and then refusing to pay, as well as trespassing. Both charges were later dismissed, court records show.

The threats at DIA were the beginning of the end of his manic and delusional episode. He eventually was connected to the Denver Police Department’s co-responder team and to one of the state’s 17 community mental health centers. Staff there went through the certification court process to medicate him against his will, and he was given an antipsychotic injection.

Within two weeks, the man was back to himself, his sister said. Then he had to deal with the aftermath of the crisis: the criminal charges, a lost job, damaged relationships, unpaid debts.

“When he comes out of it he has inklings of what happened, but it’s like someone waking up from a bad dream,” his sister said. “You know some of these things happened, but you weren’t fully present for it.”

Once he’d been certified for involuntary treatment, he was barred from buying a gun under federal law, and Denver police did not pursue a permanent extreme risk protection order, which would have barred him from possessing guns for one year, on the grounds that it would be redundant.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility from possessing a gun after being released. Most states also have similar or more restrictive laws on their books; Colorado is one of a handful of states that do not, instead relying on the federal statute, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.