It's it's a grief like we haven't
experienced before and that's what
I felt in the whole community.
It was no, this can't be. In October,
the rural mountain town of New Meadows,
Idaho, Population 517,
saw its first act of random violence.
Anyone here can remember a Vancouver,
WA, man, John Cody Hart,
allegedly shot and killed
Rory and Sarah mean.
It happened in the lobby of
the historic Heartland Inn
that they owned and operated.
So when I received the
call Saturday. I was numb.
The town immediately gathered to
mourn these pillars of the community,
people they'd known for years.
They were all about people coming
together for a common purpose.
Julie Good is the mayor of New Meadows.
How is it that he is free to
come into our small, quiet,
beautiful community and wreck havoc
not just with the family's life,
but with our lives?
When the murders happened,
John Cody Hart wasn't supposed to be
here on the streets of rural Idaho.
He was supposed to be at Western.
State hospital in Pierce County getting
treatment ordered by a Washington state
judge before heart made it to Idaho.
He was behind bars in Washington,
one of about 850 defendants in
the state waiting for court
ordered mental health treatment.
The legal wait time to go from jail
to Western State Hospital is 7 days,
but right now people are
waiting longer than ever before,
up to nine months.
But if you are, state your
date of birth. September 2nd,
1994, Your Honor,
in Harts case.
He was in the Clark County Jail in
Vancouver charged with assault.
Last year, unprovoked,
he allegedly attacked an acquaintance.
Court records show he strangled a
man and tried to rip his eyes out.
Deemed incompetent to stand trial,
heart waited four months behind
bars for a bed at Western state
until a judge got fed up.
I simply can't continue to hold
him on the expectation that maybe.
Someday they'll come pick him
up. The Department of Social and
Health Services DSHS kept putting off
hearts admission date to the hospital.
Judge Robert Lewis ruled his constitutional
rights were being violated and
released him in July to wait for a
bed at Western state in the community.
I do this with some reluctance as the
charges against Mr Hart are very serious
in his motion to release his granted.
Thank you very much, your honor. Good day.
Three months later,
Rory and Sarah mean were dead.
It's insulting a little.
The reality that this didn't have to happen.
It's going to be difficult no matter what,
but the way that it happened
and the reason that it happened.
It just adds a little bit
more of a punch to the pain
that we're already feeling.
I mean, that's horrible
to hear. That's the first
I'm hearing about that.
Doctors Thomas Kinlan and Brian Weidlinger
are senior DHS officials. Is that something
that weighs heavily on you?
Basically, I'm talking about
public safety. Of course,
I mean myself, the entire department.
That is a huge concern as well.
Again, we want to try to get to these
orders as quickly as possible, DSHS
says. They can't keep up
with current demands.
Judges are ordering a record
number of defendants get help
at Western State Hospital,
so we are working as hard as we can.
If we can't create extra beds or we
can't create staff out of thin air,
what can we do to make things work better?
This is a public safety crisis.
Rebecca Vasquez focuses on these cases
for the King County Prosecutor's office.
She says the state's problem is this
poor planning and chronic underfunding
creating the worst chaos she's seen.
Our whole community is impacted
by not taking care of people with
serious behavioral health needs.
Records obtained by KING5
show that in King County,
because of the long wait times,
judges have dismissed charges
including burglary, felony harassment.
Indecent exposure, hate crimes,
and assault with a deadly weapon.
How would you characterize what
you're seeing now, immense crisis?
And the system is years
past its breaking point.
DSHS officials say the ultimate goal
is to prevent people with mental
illness from ever entering the criminal
justice system in the 1st place.
And they're working hard to figure that out.
Do you feel like there's
hope to turn this around?
I would not be doing this job if
I didn't think there was hope.
We are thinking innovatively,
you know, what can we do differently?
Rory and Sarah
were my friends
back in rural Idaho.
A grief stricken community
has a message for leadership.
In the state of Washington,
whatever they can do to make
it so this doesn't happen again
to another small community,
whatever needs to happen,
they need to find a way.