I thank the men and women of the Lakewood Police Department, Des Moines Police Department, Spokane Police Department, Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, the State Patrol, U.S. Marshals and others who acted swiftly to capture Anthony Garver and Mark Alexander Adams.
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State and local authorities had dispatched a helicopter and search teams to hunt for Garver, who was being held at the state psychiatric facility after he was found not competent to stand trial for first-degree murder in 2013, police said.
The dog found Garver, who was hiding under debris in the woods, signaling the officers.
Spokesman Mark Gregory of the Spokane sheriff’s office says the capture of Anthony Garver on Friday night could have easily gone sideways without Gunnar’s help.
Garver was found by a police K-9 in the woods near his family home in Spokane.
As of Friday evening, Knezovich said Garver was under arrest and en route to a hospital, suffering from dehydration.
Patients in the hospital’s lower-security unit are checked every hour, said Carla Reyes, assistant director of the Department of Social and Health Services’ Behavioral Health Administration, which oversees mental health services in the state. According to Washington state DSHS officials, the patient left a civil ward on Wednesday morning with an escorted group – to visit the fashion center.
Garver was under a civil commitment after he finished serving an incarceration period, said Jeremy Barclay, DOC spokesman.
He was moved to a lower-security unit of the state’s largest psychiatric hospital after a judge said treatment to prepare him to face criminal charges wasn’t working and ordered him held as a danger to himself or others.
Meanwhile, another patient who left the same hospital on the same day as Garver and Adams remains missing.
He tied her to her bed with electrical cords, stabbed her 24 times in the chest and slashed her throat. Garver had last been seen Thursday in the Spokane area, almost 250 miles from Lakewood, after his father called authorities to report his son had stopped by briefly.
“CMS was aware of all three of these situations, and can not comment on how they will affect Western State Hospital’s Federal funding”, he said in an email. Mark Alexander Adams and Garver, described as risky, have escaped from Western State Hospital, a psychiatric facility, in Pierce County, south of Tacoma, Wednesday, April 6, 2016.
Security staff was trying to determine how the men loosened the bolts on the locked windows, state officials said. An inspection released this week found several safety risks such as unlocked doors and access to items that could be used as weapons.
Paul Vilja, nursing supervisor, said the men should have been assigned to a unit with 15 minute check, but they were only getting hourly checks.
The hospital’s safety and emergency-management official sent a memo to staff Thursday citing numerous violations observed during a recent review.
“This incident put the public at risk, the staff at risk and the patients at risk”, Inslee said, as quoted by Fox News. “The safety of the public, the patients and staff is paramount”. Hundreds of employees have suffered concussions, fractures and cuts in assaults by patients, resulting in $6 million in workers’ compensation claims between 2013 and 2015. More than half of those were caused by violent patient assaults.
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“We had each other”, DeVleming said. The patient, who was not considered unsafe, has full unescorted grounds privileges and was authorized and able to leave the grounds.
