By Joyce Tsai
Lowell Sun
TEWKSBURY, Mass. — With authorities on the trail of a 17-year-old manslaughter suspect who escaped from the grounds of Tewksbury State Hospital on Monday night, the town’s police chief said the latest breakout from the facility reignites a controversy over local access to patients’ criminal history.
The town’s Police Department, state and town officials have been fighting to get more access to the criminal history of patients staying at the hospital in order to protect residents from potential danger, said Police Chief Timothy Sheehan. But those desires have been at odds with state law, which protects the confidentiality and privacy of patients at mental facilities.
“I think this will reinvigorate efforts to strike a balance between doctor-patient privilege and the rights of people in the community to have information on the people in the state hospital to protect the community,” Sheehan said.
In November 2005, psychiatric patient Michael Lava was driving off the hospital grounds on a day pass when he refused to stop for police, crashing into two other cars and injuring a woman and an elderly couple.
That incident was one of a string of incidents from the state mental institution that prompted Sheehan and state Rep. Jim Miceli, along with then-Police Chief Al Donovan and former Selectman John Mackey, to push the state to give police more access to information about the criminal history of patients at the hospital.
While it included an amendment allowing for the editing of names to keep patients’ identities confidential, the proposal never made it to the Legislature for a vote. The state Department of Mental Health has been “a stumbling block” to those efforts, as it holds fast to the inviolability of those patient’s confidentiality, Sheehan said.
Seventeen-year-old Jeremy Price’s escaped from the Centerpoint program on the hospital grounds at about 9 p.m. on Monday night, after scaling a 15-foot fence when he was granted outside privileges on the hospital’s grounds. His escape touched off a manhunt, which continued last night.
Miceli said, however, that the CORI issue is secondary to the fact that an agreement between the town, state and institution that would have ensured that suspected felons would not be housed at the mental institution had been broken.
“I am upset that this guy was even housed there,” Miceli said. “That’s what I’m most upset about. How did he get into the building? Never mind how he got out, but how did he get in there in the first place?”
Paulette Song, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the Centerpoint program, although housed on hospital grounds, is not actually run by the state hospital. It is run by a state contractor, Boston-based Justice Resource Institute, which runs a number of similar facilities in the state. The Department of Mental Health funds and provides oversight to the center.
A judge presiding over Price’s case determined that Centerpoint would be an appropriate facility for the escapee, Song said.
Price was the first resident to run from the program in 13 years, said Andy Pond, CEO of Justice Resource Institute, in a written statement. He emphasized that the state evaluated the program before putting Price in it.
“The program, while locked for residents’ safety, is not designed to be, nor used as, a secure correctional facility,” Pond said.
It’s believed that Price has left the Tewksbury area by now, but police are still searching fields and wooded areas near the hospital as a precaution, as well as questioning his family and former associates in Boston, Sheehan said.
Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley, said Price was arrested in connection with the death of a Boston man.
Price punched Michael Hansbury, 41, on June 5, 2007, causing Hansbury to fall and strike his head on a curb, Wark said. Wark said Price did not know Hansbury, who died a week later at a Boston hospital.
But Price was deemed developmentally disabled and thus not competent for trial.
“The key problem is that... his underlying condition is not treatable by medication or any other means,” Wark said.
Price is described as a black male, about 5 feet 10 inches tall and 200 pounds.
Anyone who thinks they may have spotted him should call 911 immediately. Anyone with less urgent information on his whereabouts should call Tewksbury police at 978-851-7373.
Sun reporter Robert Mills contributed to this report.
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