LONGVIEW — A woman died after lighting a fire and then stabbing herself in the neck near a Longview gas station in early January.
Now the family is questioning why their loved one died after her encounter with the officers who were called to help her, as police and mental health professionals continue to grapple with how to help people who might not want aid.
Police say a roughly six-month-old program to house mental health professionals in the Longview Police Department is linking people in need with care and limiting repeated crisis calls, but even the added effort can fall short.
“Sometimes, these things just end up as tragedies,” said Longview Capt. Branden McNew.
911 call
Stephanie Harlan said she and her husband, David Harlan, Sr., were leaving the Longview Snap Fitness around 5:30 p.m. Jan. 9 when they saw a woman on the corner of Ocean Beach Highway and Cascade Way near the Shell gas station light a fire inside a suitcase.
The couple pulled over to call 911 and took video of people trying to put out the flames, Stephanie Harlan said.
Kehden Brewer, 19, of Kelso said he carried the gas station’s bin of windshield wiper fluid from the Chevron across the street and extinguished the fire while the woman’s back was turned.
She soon relit the flames. Another person approached, and the woman lit aerosol can spray like a torch to fight him off, Brewer said.
When the police arrived, the woman pulled out a small tool and stabbed herself twice in the neck, David Harlan said.
Both David Harlen and Brewer said officers asked her to drop the weapon, but the woman held on. She was tased, David Harlan said, and she slumped forward. A police report says she then dropped the weapon and told an officer, “Let me die” when he started to administer aid.
“When they approached her, they immediately started CPR,” David Harlan said. “Those officers did everything they could to help that woman.”
Maria Mannon
It took several days for Julie Cole, 44, of Puyallup to find her missing cousin Maria Mannon, 43, of Chinook, which is roughly an hour and a half west of Cowlitz County on the coast.
PeaceHealth hospital staff reached out to her and other relatives through Facebook, saying Mannon was on life support from a heart attack and lack of oxygen to the brain after an encounter with police, Cole said.
Mannon was in the hospital for eight days, when the family chose to take her off life support. She died the next day, on Jan. 18.
The last Cole had heard, Mannon was having issues with her long-term boyfriend, who had called the Chinook police looking for her. From a police report Cole learned Mannon had hitched a ride to Longview from neighbors, who said she seemed upset.
Cole had to dig through social-media posts and police records to piece together what happened in her cousin’s final hours, she said.
“I found out because I kept looking,” Cole said.
Mannon had a history of depression and anxiety, Cole added.
Now, Cole is left wondering why her cousin is gone after officers were called to help her and why it took so long for her family to be notified.
“My cousin was a good person,” she said. “She was a sweet, loving person. Maria didn’t need to die that day because she needed mental help.”
‘Threat to her life’
A mental health professional contracted with the Longview Police Department was at the scene of Mannon’s crisis, said Longview Capt. McNew, but didn’t have time to help. Officers and the counselor approached the scene as Mannon was stabbing herself, he said.
McNew said Mannon was tased because “she was an immediate threat to her life,” and officers could not safely come close to disarm her.
An officer aimed a taser toward her waist on dart mode and two probes hit, according to police records. McNew said shocks on this mode last up to 5 seconds and can be administered from up to 35 feet away.
Officers attended Mannon’s neck wounds, then worked to resuscitate her when she lost consciousness, he said. An ambulance took her to PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center in Longview, then later a Vancouver hospital, he added.
The Clark County Coroner’s Office reports results of Mannon’s cause and manner of death are pending. A PeaceHealth representative said Mannon’s medical records could not be released.
Reports of officers’ use of force, including deploying tasers, are reviewed internally, McNew said, but no issues arose with this case that sparked further investigation.
He said police don’t typically follow up when people they encounter are sent to the hospital, in part, because they don’t have enough staff.
The ‘what ifs’
Longview police have contracted three mental health clinicians to work in their Hudson Street station since the fall to help officers respond to calls when people are in crisis.
Members of this Behavioral Health Unit wear bulletproof vests labeled “counselor,” and join officers on calls involving suspected mental crises, from trespassing reports to bomb threats.
Before the counselors started working at the department, they fielded similar emergency calls through the regional behavioral health nonprofit Columbia Wellness. Columbia Wellness Chief Executive Officer Drew McDaniel said the Longview-based organization has the contract for a state-sanctioned mobile crisis team in Cowlitz, Wahkiakum and Grays Harbor counties which fields calls from 911 dispatch centers to concerned family members about people in crisis.
When Longview police took three of the nonprofit’s clinicians, Columbia Wellness hired three more to replace them, McDaniel said. A clinician also works at the Kelso Police Department, he added.
The counselors at police stations help people connect with needed services, like medication and housing. They don’t carry caseloads like a social worker, McNew said, but follow up with people they encounter in the field to ensure they get the help they need.
Since the counselors joined the Longview department around August, they have responded to 376 calls, McNew said, out of the roughly 10,000 calls the department receives a quarter. Unlike the crisis team at Columbia Wellness that is available 24-7, the clinicians at the police department are only available during the day.
And their presence is working. McNew said crisis calls are down because the team has linked people in need with organizations that can help them.
Before the behavioral health team, officers had few options to stop repeated reports about the same people in crisis, he added.
“There is only so much you can do as a police officer if they didn’t break the law,” McNew said. “The Behavioral Health Unit has given us this service we wanted to provide for a long time.”
There are more local mental health providers helping people in crisis thanks to the program, but there still is a need for more, McDaniel said. Behavioral health treatment should be considered as necessary as medical help, he added.
Despite all the efforts and collaboration between police and mental health professionals, McDaniel said, every person isn’t saved.
“The whys and what ifs will drive us so far away, because we might not always have the answers,” he said. “It’s saddening, it breaks my heart, when every great intention is there, but tragedy still occurs. We look at every situation and say, ‘Is there anything we can do more, is there anything we can do better, so we can help the next person?’”
