This case reminds me of another

Is anyone else seeing shades of Mitrice Richardson in the Ebonee Spears case I posted today? Obviously Mitrice’s disappearance and death is a much more egregious example of neglect, but Ebonee made me think of her.

Out of curiosity I Googled Mitrice, and I discovered her case was in the news as recently as this past November and is still under investigation. Sigh.

Unfortunately, when it comes to mental illness, the laws are such that unless the person agrees to get medical attention, the police and medical professionals usually can’t help. Almost two years ago I had a bad reaction to some medication and started hallucinating and having delusions and babbling nonsense and what have you. Michael took me to the hospital; they shrugged their shoulders and sent me home again. That night I kept trying to walk right through his glass deck door out into the winter cold, wearing only a turtleneck and underpants. Michael called the police and they came and assessed the situation, and they said there was nothing they could do. I wasn’t suicidal, and as long as I was indoors, I didn’t qualify as a danger to myself. They told him to just make sure I didn’t leave the house. Michael had to call his parents to come and stay up all night with me and physically prevent me from leaving. If it weren’t for the three of them, I almost certainly would have wandered off and frozen to death.

The situation totally sucks. How do you toe the line between respecting people’s civil rights, and making sure that they can get help when they really need it?

I really, really hope Ebonee doesn’t turn out to have shared Mitrice’s fate. But I’m not optimistic. It’s been a year.

MP of the week, a bit early

Yeah, so tonight I’m taking off for my dad’s place, and early on Monday morning we’re leaving and driving to Philadelphia to visit the Mütter Museum. It’s an anatomical museum with exhibits such as a piece of Einstein’s brain and this skull collection. Anyway, I don’t anticipate being back until Wednesday, so I thought I’d post my MP of the week early.

This week it’s Violet Watzulik, an elderly woman who disappeared from Sarasota, Florida on June 10, 2000. Violet’s son Carl claims she just up and left on an extended cruise and never came back, but the authorities have their doubts. You can see an article copied and pasted on this CrimeWatchers thread, to the effect that Violet’s daughter believes she is dead, and Carl is the self-described “number one suspect” in her case. He still lives in Sarasota and, from what I can tell, has no serious criminal record. I found one arrest in 2011, on a minor drug charge.

Violet was declared legally dead in 2006. She would be 100 years old now, if she was still alive, which I’m quite sure she isn’t.