CAPT Outreach magazine
June 1998

Editor's Column
By Keith Hearn

Psych Tech shares personal tragedy to support passage of assault bill

Alan Snow

In the State Capitol, Alan Snow sat at a table before the raised desks of the State Assembly's Public Safety Committee. He'd just given the legislators two photos of his wife, Patsy. Small photos, yet showing far more convincingly than sterile words why state hospital staff need CAPT's assault-deterrent legislation, AB 1783.

One photo shows Patsy right after she was ruthlessly beaten nearly to death by a 19-year-old, 260-pound patient at Metropolitan State Hospital where she was a Psych Tech. That was November 1995.

The other shows her today, still beyond the edge of consciousness, except for brief periods of slight responses. Alan was also a Metro Psych Tech, though he's left the hospital now. In fact, he was working in a nearby unit and led other staffers to her rescue. As legislators passed the photos, Alan began to speak:

"My wife was assaulted by a patient with a long history of assault against his peers, staff, police officers and correctional officers. He trapped my wife in a nursing station and beat, kicked and jumped on her for approximately 20 minutes until help finally arrived to stop the situation.

"She's in a nursing care home now and she'll be in that kind of a facility for the rest of her life. "You know, she's not the only one in this situation where people are off work permanently because they've been injured by this type of patient.

"These patients have been raised in an institution where there is no punishment for assaultive behavior. They might get an hour in restraints and they're back among their peers doing the same thing all over again."

Snow said his wife's attacker, Christopher Knutson, "was sent to prison and is now back in a mental hospital where he has no one to keep him from doing the same thing to someone else. And it's a guaranteed thing that he's going to hurt someone else."

At the time of Snow's comments, Knutson was indeed at Atascadero State Hospital in double restraints and staffed 2-on-1. Now he's at ultra-security Pelican Bay State Prison, serving a 21-year prison sentence for attacking Patsy and Psych Tech Virgie Connor, who sustained broken bones but recovered.

The attack was so brutal that there was no question it would be prosecuted under existing felony assault laws. But attacks are not felonies unless they cause "serious bodily injury" or death, or are attempted murders. Because of that, they only lead to county jail time, a $2,000 fine or both.

In contrast, it's a felony to cause such a less serious injury to any peace officer, correctional officer, firefighter, paramedic -- even to an animal control officer or to a nurse giving emergency care outside a hospital setting.

As reported in another article, Alan's story plus other testimony was not enough to convince legislators to approve AB 1783. So, we'll give it another try next year.

By then we hope to learn from this year's experience, re-draft the bill's language to overcome the opposition and gather additional persuasive evidence. Hopefully with no new horror stories to report.

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