Police still struggle with mental patients

NEW ORLEANS – Latina Williams was living in her car and recently had shown signs of losing touch with reality, police said as they continued to try to determine why she opened fire in a vo-tech college classroom on Friday, killing two students and then herself.
Investigators believe Williams bought a .357 revolver and box of ammunition from a New Orleans pawn shop and called a crisis center to say she was planning to kill herself. The 23-year-old woman then went to Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge, walked into a classroom, shot and killed two women, reloaded and then shot herself.
No motive has yet been established, however her mental condition may have contributed, police say.
The shooting came less than two weeks after Bernel Johnson, described by New Orleans police as a mentally ill vagrant, allegedly wrestled a gun from Officer Nicola Cotton and shot her to death.
Johnson’s family said he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with violent tendencies when he was 19. Homeless and bounced around mental facilities, he’s now at Orleans Parish Prison.
Johnson has plenty of company.
In post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, where hospitals are still not operating at capacity, the prison’s 60 psychiatric beds make it the largest acute-care psychiatric facility in the city. One full-time psychiatrist and two part-timers treat patients, said prison spokeswoman Renee Lapeyrolerie.
The LSU Medical Center has 29 acute care beds, and plans to increase that to 40, said Dr. Mark Townsend, Vice Chairman at the LSU Health Science Department of Psychiatry.