…If you live in Washington state, anyway. Stop me at the point in the story where you begin to suspect plans were not well thought out:
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A criminally insane killer from eastern Washington is on the run after escaping during a field trip to the county fair that his mental hospital organized.
Whoa!! That’s about as far as I got. Someone please help me understand why the people who came up with this genius idea aren’t locked up with the rest of the criminally insane?
…Authorities at Eastern State Hospital, where Paul is a patient, are being criticized for allowing him to visit the fair despite his violent criminal past and a history of trying to escape.
"Why was he allowed to take such a trip?" the governor said Friday. "Why did they go to a location that was so heavily populated with families?"
Those do seem like excellent questions to be asking. This, however, does not seem like an excellent time to be asking them.
Authorities believed Paul, 47, was headed for the Sunnyside, Wash., area where his parents and many siblings live.
Paul was committed after he was acquitted by reason of insanity in the 1987 slaying of an elderly woman, whose body he soaked in gasoline to throw off search dogs. Paul buried the woman's remains in her flower garden.
…Spokane County sheriff's officials were told Paul had $50 when he escaped Thursday — enough money to buy a bus ticket, said sheriff's spokesman Dave Reagan.
This story just can’t get worse, can it?
…Paul also had time, according to a union that said hospital administrators waited nearly two hours before calling law enforcement. The union said workers alerted their superiors minutes after discovering Paul's escape.
Okay, maybe it can get worse.
"They believe he was an extreme escape risk and the administration should never have allowed him on the field trip," a statement from the Washington Federation of State Employees said. "The workers have unsuccessfully fought to stop the outings for murderers, rapists and pedophiles committed to the hospital as criminally insane."
You think?
The article is notably lacking an account from the people responsible for this program. I’d like to hear their side of this now, please.
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