A 17-year-old boy who was shot in the wrist during a confrontation with police at Roosevelt High School this week needs to be housed and treated in a secure mental health facility on the mainland because there are no appropriate facilities in the islands, his attorney said Friday.
Eric Seitz said he plans to meet with representatives of the prosecutor’s office, Health Department and Department of Education to find a suitable mainland treatment facility that is secure and locked 24 hours a day. The facility, he said, also needs to provide services and programs for children who have mental health needs complicated by substance abuse.
The boy was taken to the Queen’s Medical Center for surgery and will be transferred to its psychiatric unit until he can be placed in a suitable mainland facility, which Seitz says the state is required to do.
Facilities like Kahi Mohala in Ewa Beach and the Queen’s Family Treatment Center are "crisis-oriented programs where kids can go to be stabilized," Seitz said.
"But once they are stabilized then they should go to an appropriate program, and we don’t have any. You can’t stabilize the kid and then kick him out and say, ‘We know you are going to be back here because your underlining problems have not been treated,’" Seitz said.
The teen’s mother, Shereen Narvaes, said her son has been diagnosed under a broad spectrum of psychiatric illnesses that includes schizophrenia, and that for the last year she has tried to get him treatment.
About two weeks ago, Narvaes said, her son had been awaiting a psychiatric review to determine fitness to stand trial for misdemeanor charges when he escaped from the Queen’s Medical Center, where he had been admitted by court order. He later ran away from a facility operated by Hale Kipa, a social agency serving at-risk/high-risk youth.
The teen went to the Roosevelt campus on Tuesday to try to register for classes for the first time.
School officials called police to take him into custody because he was a runaway. His mother had reported him as a runaway to police and also contacted Roosevelt officials.
When the youth saw police officers at a school counselor’s office, he allegedly became "combative" and lunged at them with a kitchen knife, inflicting minor injuries. One of the officers, a 10-year veteran, fired two shots. One struck the boy on the wrist.
Because he is a minor, the case was referred to the Family Court, "where all proceedings are confidential," Seitz said. The boy was arrested on suspicion of three counts of first-degree attempted murder.
Seitz said he would fight any attempt to require his client to be tried in adult court.
There are still snags in Hawaii’s special education system, even 20 years after the federal Felix consent decree, which was supposed to correct them, Seitz said.
Two decades ago, he represented Jennifer Felix, who filed a class-action lawsuit that aimed to create "a seamless system of care where kids who would go from one level of need to another level of need could transition into programs that were existing here without gaps."
Another objective was that every child with significant or intensive needs would have a case manager or care coordinator. As an infant, Felix was stricken with a virus that left her suffering from seizures and severely developmentally delayed. In school on Maui, she exhibited erratic, sometimes violent behavior. Her mother said Felix would run away for no reason, hit herself repeatedly against walls or floors, and would violently push and hit people.
In 1993, her attorneys filed suit for special-education children in Hawaii. A year later, the state agreed to a consent decree that was to bring reforms for children in special education and cost the state $1 billion.
In 2005, her family, with the help of Seitz, forced the state to send Felix to a "last chance" program at the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s neurobehavioral unit in Baltimore, for individuals with developmental disabilities who are self-injurious or display other severe behaviors.
Seitz said the state has yet to develop an adequate system of care.
"That’s what gave rise to the problems here," Seitz said, referring to the Roosevelt shooting, because state health and education officials didn’t provide the services the youth needed.
"He was in and out of psychiatric facilities that quite frankly told everybody he can’t be treated here. He needs something more consistent and intensive. Those recommendations were ignored."
