How New York Has Failed Mentally Ill Homeless People for Years
The last breakdown of Marcus Gomez began in full view of the people whose job it was to stop it.
First, Mr. Gomez, a slight 45-year-old who was homeless and had long lived with schizophrenia, started hearing voices. Then he stripped off his clothes and stalked naked through the halls of his transitional housing program. Finally, according to his treatment notes, the voices overpowered him: They were telling him to kill the program’s staff.
Afraid for their safety, the program workers asked a nearby hospital, Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, to admit Mr. Gomez for inpatient care. Once stable, he might continue treatment, perhaps even find permanent housing.
But the hospital did not stabilize him. Instead, hours after receiving him in July 2018, it discharged him into the night. Still psychotic, he drifted across New York City to his grandmother’s apartment in the Bronx, seized a kitchen knife and, swinging wildly, set upon her home health aide, stabbing the 62-year-old caregiver in the head, chest, armpits, arms — 37 times in all.
“My mind made me do it,” Mr. Gomez told the police when they questioned him. The caregiver barely survived. Mr. Gomez went to jail.
Even in a city where encounters with unstable homeless people have become a part of daily life, the shocking act of violence that Mr. Gomez carried out was unusual. But the circumstances that allowed it to happen were not.