Posted on 11/11/2007 9:24:47 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
More than three years after he was shot four times by Madison police during a night of bizarre behavior, a man who calls himself David Lopez Jr. will soon be released from a state mental hospital.
If he were actually David Lopez Jr. he would walk out of the Mendota Mental Health Institute and return to society with a well-documented plan to keep up the treatment he 's been receiving for schizophrenia and drug and alcohol addictions.
But his real identity is Carlos Toledo-Rubio, 26, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who followed a hometown friend to Madison to find work.
It's Toledo-Rubio who will soon be freed from Mendota, his home since his arrest in 2004, once the state Department of Health and Family Services comes up with a conditional release plan. But given that he would almost certainly be handed over to immigration authorities, what sort of plan that will be is anyone's guess.
Toledo-Rubio entered the public spotlight on June 14, 2004, when he was shot four times by Madison police Sgt. Karen Krahn during a bizarre episode on Williamson Street. It started when he attacked and sexually assaulted an ex-girlfriend. By the time it was over he had fought with police, grappled with an officer over her gun, stolen and crashed a squad car and stood up to multiple Taser shocks.
Despite his wounds, it still took six police officers to get the struggling Toledo-Lopez loaded into an ambulance.
He was charged with second-degree sexual assault, false imprisonment, attempting to disarm a police officer, driving a stolen car, battery, battery to a police officer, resisting police and bail jumping.
In September 2005, Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Nicks accepted an agreement between defense attorney David Knoll and Dane County prosecutors and found Toledo-Rubio guilty of all of the charges but not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. The finding means he is still considered innocent in the eyes of the law. Nicks ordered him confined to a state mental hospital for up to 19 years and seven months.
Earlier this year, Toledo-Rubio petitioned for early release. In reports to the court, doctors neither recommended keeping him at Mendota nor releasing him, prompting Nicks to order DHFS to draw up a release plan. That plan is due in mid-December.
The only reservation doctors expressed, Knoll said, was that the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement had placed a detainer on Toledo-Rubio on May 22. That means he will be taken into ICE custody when he's released from Mendota and likely deported.
"What assurances do we have that he continues to receive appropriate medication and treatment?" Knoll said one report asked.
The detainer has already resulted in a change to Toledo-Rubio's security status at Mendota. As his mental health improved, Toledo-Rubio was allowed staff-escorted shopping trips into the community. Now he is locked up in the hospital 's secure section, Knoll said.
Friend identified him
When Toledo-Rubio was shot in 2004, police had a pretty good idea he wasn't David Lopez Jr., the name he had given them. Lt. Mary Lou Ricksecker said officers had encountered him a few months earlier, and at that time he used the name Carlos Toledo-Rubio.
Not long after, police received a call from Issael Angeles-Morales, a hometown friend of Toledo-Rubio 's who had seen his picture in the newspaper after the shooting incident.
Angeles-Morales said at the time that Toledo-Rubio had been in Madison for about three years and that his family in Mexico was worried about him. Reached by police in Mexico, Toledo-Rubio 's father, Aquileo Toledo-Colin, said his son was in the U.S. illegally and it wouldn 't be unusual to use an alias to get work.
Still, said Ricksecker, there are indications that Toledo-Rubio has clung to his alias, going so far earlier this year as to request -- and receive -- a copy of a David Lopez birth certificate from Texas.
He still signs legal papers as David Lopez Jr. and is referred to as Lopez in medical reports used at his Oct. 15 conditional release hearing. Even the judge referred to him alternately during the hearing as Lopez and Toledo-Rubio. Only Deputy District Attorney Judy Schwaemle stuck to calling him "Mr. Toledo-Rubio."
DHFS spokeswoman Rebecca Murray said that if Mendota staff suspect a client is using a false identity, the agency would notify the appropriate authorities. She could not say, however, what happened in this case because of federal medical privacy regulations.
In the Mendota report from March, "Lopez " said he was born in Brownsville, Texas, is 31 years old and moved to Mexico when he was 8 or 9. He said he left Mexico in 2001.
The report indicates that Toledo-Rubio has responded well to medication and therapy.
"Mr. Lopez has expressed remorse for his victim, his behavior toward the police and the pain he has put his family through," his therapist wrote in the report. "He is well aware that society may not be accepting toward him and that transitioning back into society will be difficult, and because of this he has created a plan to ease his transition. "
Future uncertain
But with the ICE detainer and deportation hanging over him, what form that transition takes is up in the air, his attorney said.
"I can 't pretend that I know what ICE does for people who are detained, " Knoll said. He said it's extremely expensive to Wisconsin taxpayers -- about $600 per day -- to keep Toledo-Rubio in an institution here. But if he were to be kept at Mendota solely because of his immigration status and not his clinical status, he said, that would also not be fair to Toledo-Rubio.
Gail Montenegro, ICE spokeswoman in Chicago, said detainees receive a mental health screening by the federal Division of Immigration Health Services, and those in need are given treatment.
ICE also tells authorities in deportees' home countries of any special health needs, including any necessary ongoing treatment. Montenegro said ICE spends more than $98 million annually on medical treatment for the more than 260,000 detainees who pass through its system each year.
Rodney Miller, DHFS mental health and forensic services manager, said the agency has handled a "handful " of situations like Toledo-Rubio 's. Patients are usually sent away with a small supply of their medications and are generally taken to Chicago by ICE.
"At that point we lose touch with them, " Miller said. "The feds don't necessarily get back to us, and there 's no way of tracking that. The person is out of our custody and, for that matter, out of state. "
He said that 's troubling for clinicians who have worked hard with patients in these situations.
"I think any clinician, and I'm a former clinician, we certainly hope that the treatment that 's been provided and that which has served to stabilize a person is able to be continued, " Miller said. "I think any clinician wants the ongoing success of the patient to be maintained."
THAT IS MEXICO'S PROBLEM. What a congregation of squish-heads.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
What is not “fair” is that US taxpayers keep getting stuck for medical expenses for this pos and others like him.
And people wonder why health care is so expensive. It’s because the regular clients have to pay double or triple in order to accommodate freeloaders like this.
How much did all this care and treatment cost the taxpayers and the hospital so far? Maybe several hundred thousand dollars?
"What assurances do we have that he continues to receive appropriate medication and treatment?" Knoll said one report asked.
Well Mr lawyer, tell ya what - how about when he's deported -- YOU GO WITH HIM. You can get a house together and YOU can give him his meds. That is, until he KILLS YOU and chops you up into little pieces for 'steak tacos'.
“How much did all this care and treatment cost the taxpayers and the hospital so far? Maybe several hundred thousand dollars”
Yep, just one guy.
About $600 per day since 2004 just for the institution where he lived.
Who will then likely return through the revolving door at the border where he'll proceed to resume a life of crime in a new American city.
It would seem to me that david knoll is trying to preserve his court appointed meal ticket fees.. Someone needs to file charges against him with the bar.
Brand him, tattoo him, and launch him over the border. Let HIS country worry about him.
bump
ping
Bttt!
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