Ancora is missing another patient

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I would not want to live anywhere in the vicinity of this psych hospital. It seems they can't keep their patients controlled and/or confined. Yikes.....

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Ancora is missing another patient

Mar. 18, 2008
Ancora Psychiatric Hospital is once again missing a patient, this time a paranoid schizophrenic accused of trying to stab his mother with a screwdriver.

And once again, the Camden County facility failed to promptly disclose a problem with a patient.

Even Gov. Corzine was kept in the dark when he visited Ancora last week.

The latest missing patient, Rahim Harris, 28, of Brick, Ocean County, was due to return from an authorized leave on March 9. Corzine visited the following day.

Two criminally insane murderers escaped from Ancora last year.

In December, DeWitt Crandell Jr., who stabbed his parents to death in 1996, wandered off the grounds, taking advantage of court-ordered privileges. After being gone for just two hours, he was found naked, scratched and bleeding near Hammonton, Atlantic County.

He hanged himself with a bedsheet the following morning, despite supposedly being under constant observation.

Within days, Ancora's CEO and a security guard were removed from their jobs.

In early September, double murderer William Enman was the subject of a search for three days. He was finally discovered on the hospital grounds. In 1974, he killed his roommate and his roommate's 4-year-old son with a baseball bat.

Ancora was also recently scolded for not disclosing two recent deaths during hearings held by the Assembly Human Services Committee.

While those deaths may been from natural causes, a female patient was smothered to death by her roommate in July 2006, and six months later a man died after being punched in an argument over a cigarette.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20080318_Ancora_is_missing_another_patient.html

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Patient fails to return to Ancora but governor stops by instead

March 19, 2008
 A patient at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital disappeared during a home visit earlier this month, an unfortunate but not an uncommon event that happens there about three times a month, state Human Services spokeswoman Ellen Lovejoy said.

What was unusual, however, is that the day after the 28-year-old man's disappearance March 9, Gov. Jon Corzine made a surprise late- night visit to the troubled hospital.


   

No one told Corzine during his visit that a patient had gone AWOL, Lovejoy confirmed, but said the department wasn't trying to hide anything. The patient, who fled Freehold Mall while shopping with his mother, is still missing, Lovejoy said.

"Typically, we do not routinely report to the governor when a dischargeable patient is out on home visit and fails to return on time," Lovejoy said. "We have our internal reporting system."

Officials say the man was committed last year after he tried to as sault his mother with a screwdriver. He was not charged with a crime.

His treatment team had decided the patient, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was stable enough to leave the hospital in Camden County, and allowed him off-site unsupervised visits. Yet he remained a patient -- one of more than 1,000 state hospital patients who are waiting to be placed in a transitional housing and treatment program.

The state's failure to timely discharge such patients is at the heart of a lawsuit brought by New Jersey Protection and Advocacy Inc. two years ago. The state is trying to settle the case.

Ancora, located in Winslow Township, has been the site of several escapes and two patient-on- patient homicides in the last two years, drawing the attention of lawmakers and advocates.

When asked yesterday whether he was "offended" that he was not informed of the patient's disap pearance immediately, the governor said he wasn't.

"I think offended would not be the right way to describe how I felt," Corzine told reporters at pub lic appearance at the Hyatt Re gency in New Brunswick. "The reality is that this is a patient that has the right to go home under the rules and regs.

"That was really not the reason why I was there. I was trying to take a look at how the operation runs at night," Corzine said. "I have been there several times during the day, and I wanted to check on the conditions and operations on some of the night shifts."

Corzine said compared with prior visits, Ancora appeared "cleaner and brighter." He also praised the acting chief executive officer at Ancora, Greg Roberts, for helping to reduce the number of patients each employee cares for.

"I think steps are being taken to correct some of the issues that people are concerned about. There is more work to do," he added.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-10/1205904982248810.xml&coll=1

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Missing patient returns to Ancora without incident

An Ancora Psychiatric Hospital patient reported missing after being granted leave to visit family in Monmouth County was returned to the hospital without incident on Wednesday.

Rahim Harris, 28, formerly of Brick, failed to return from an authorized leave from the Winslow facility. Police were notified he was missing March 9 and he was taken into custody Wednesday morning.

Ellen Lovejoy, a Department of Human Services spokeswoman, said she could not confirm the identity of the person apprehended or provide further details because of patient confidentiality. She said "a person" who was reported missing from Ancora was taken into custody around 10 a.m. Wednesday and returned to the hospital without incident.

Harris' mother said she last saw her son March 9 when she dropped him off at a mall in Freehold to buy CDs. He was supposed to call her to drive him back to the hospital, she said.

 Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who toured Ancora during a night shift March 10, was not informed that a patient was missing. Through his spokeswoman, Lilo Stainton, the governor said in an e-mail that would not have been unusual.

The governor said the person was on an authorized leave and, when he did not report back, it "would have broken the privacy rules to put that person's name into the public forum."

Harris, a paranoid schizophrenic committed to the hospital last year for trying to stab his mother with a screwdriver, had been released from Georgia State Prison in 2004 after serving five years for his involvement with an armed robbery.

>>>>the complete article
http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080320/NEWS01/803200387/1006