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Copley News Service

May 1, 2002

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Family wanted Salinger committed

By Sarah Antonacci

Andrew Sallenger's family knew he was having problems and had sought Monday to get him involuntarily committed - but he did not meet the required state standards.

"We tried and tried to seek help and couldn't get it. If they knew he had an illness .. . This all could have been different," said Teresa Johnson as she sat in a conference room Tuesday morning at St. John's Hospital.

Johnson, a friend of the Sallengers, and about six other friends and family members recounted how they'd tried to find help for the 35-year-old man, who, after being restrained by police Tuesday, was hospitalized at St. John's and not expected to make it through the night.

This wasn't the first time relatives had been faced with figuring out what to do with Sallenger, who they said had struggled with depression and other problems since his half brother died in 1994.

And his situation this week wasn't the first time his mental illness had made him a focus of the police, or the media.

In 1996, Sallenger held his estranged wife and two children at gunpoint at the Olde Towne Apartment complex at Bruns Lane and Jefferson Street. The siege lasted about seven hours.

As a result, he was sentenced to six years in prison for aggravated unlawful restraint. In exchange, counts of aggravated assault, battery, unlawful restraint and armed violence were dropped. He spent a little less than two years in prison.

On Sunday, Sallenger sneaked out of his mother's house and wandered away, eventually knocking on a stranger's door in the 1900 block of Pope Street.

The woman was alarmed and called police. When officers got there, they found Sallenger in the nearby New Life Evangelical Church, where church members were "exorcising the demons" from him, according to a police report.

When police tried to get him out of the church, he went limp, the report indicated, and when officers got him outside, he started flailing. An ambulance was called, and Sallenger was taken to Memorial Medical Center, examined and released.

The Sallengers say Andrew was battered by police Sunday night, too.

Taken to jail, he was put on suicide watch. His family bailed him out the next day. They also went to see mental health officials and the state's attorney's office to see if someone could help them have him involuntarily committed.

First assistant state's attorney John Belz said an assistant state's attorney called the jail Monday to find out why Sallenger was on suicide watch. Belz said the attorney was told that it was because of Sallenger's past, not anything he'd said or done during his most recent jail stay.

McFarland also was called, and it was determined that there wasn't enough evidence to admit Sallenger, Belz said.

An involuntary committal "would have had to show he was reasonably expected to inflict immediate harm to himself or someone else in the future, and that was not present in this case," Belz said.

According to the Department of Human Services, family members or others who want to have someone committed must show that the person is mentally ill and expected to inflict serious harm to himself or others. Or, the mental illness must be proved to be so severe that the person can no longer care for himself.

Then, the family member has to draw up a petition, generally prepared with the help of the state's attorney's office or a mental health provider. The petition goes before a judge, who can order a psychological examination.

The law also provides guidance for several steps beyond such an exam.

Johnson said Sallenger was not being "hurtful" during his most recent problems but that he had been acting strangely and did seem a bit paranoid.