A disturbed Bronx-Man repeatedly fell due to the cracks in the broken system of New York City and the indignation grows that a 14-year-old boy is said to have been killed in a psychiatric facility.
The saga of Waldo Mejia – who shouted, “I’m with Satan!” In court after the police said he randomly put a knife in the chest of Teen Caleb Rijos – shows the terrible need to change the involuntary deployment laws of the state, Pol’s and lawyers told the mail.
“The New York City criminal justice system is not just the ever-evolving bail statute is not equipped to tackle people who indicate clearly advanced signs of psychological disorders and undertake bizarre and violent deeds,” said Mark Beererow, a large Apple defense lawyer who is not involved in the matter.
“There were all kinds of red flags with this guy for this terrible incident and it’s just useless.”
For years of spiral psychological disorders, Mejia threatened his mother, set fire to the lobby of his ex-girlfriend’s building and sets the doorbell camera of a neighbor, according to records and sources.
But Mejia, 29, seems to have repeatedly walked out of mental health care, so he is free to first first scrap a straphanger and then to stop deadly Rijos in January.
“He does it for us, before our own eyes and our criminal justice system, it just keeps happening time and time again,” said assemblager Sam Pirozzolo (R-Staten Island), who proposed a bill that someone would automatically force in a mental health treatment program if they are arrested 10 times for the same crime.
This week a judge ordered Mejia to a psychiatric facility, where he will stay until he is deemed suitable for murder and manslaughter in killing Rijos.
The move came shortly after Albany Democrats were ready to the bid of Gov. Kathy Hochul to expand or reject involuntary deployment laws in the upcoming state budget.
Instead, the DEMs circled a weaker proposal to demand assessment panels after incidents in which mentally ill people fall through the cracks or harm others.
A source that is familiar with negotiations on the state budget indicated that Hochul, speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and the Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) brought the involuntary dedication of the Governor into contact and that they should be in general.
But the conversations, which started seriously this week, did not go into what exactly those changes could entail – or if they could have withdrawn someone like Mejia and prevented the meaningless death of Rijos.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, in a press conference after the murder on January 10, said that the case should be a call for action for dealing with repeated perpetrators and people serious mental health problems.
“The status quo just doesn’t work for New Yorkers,” Tisch said.
“A brutal, unprecedented murder of a 14-year-old child by a career criminal or time and again recidiv, with [a severe] History of mental health interactions with the NYPD. “
Mejia had Schizophrenia suffered and his family had pushed him to receive voluntary treatment Since an arrest of 2015, although he often stopped taking his medication, his step brother told Gothamist.
The arrest of 2015-in which the police said that Mejia had a gravitational knife, assumed for protection was the first of at least four times that NYPD officers took him in custody, according to sources for law enforcement.
The next arrest of Mejia came in May 2017, when his mother told the police that he called her to say that he would break everything in her Bronx house, according to the sources.
She returned home, where she was confronted by Mejia, who told her: “I have a gun,” the sources said. Nervous she called the police, who arrested her son.
The outcome of both arms shops remained unclear.
Then the police arrested again in 2019 Mejia after he had set fire to the lobby of the Bronx apartment building of ex-girlfriend, Source said.
He begged his arson for reckless threat and was granted released on condition that he undergoes treatment of mental health care, According to the New York Times.
The next arrest came on November 27, 2024, more than a month before the murder of Rijos-Toen his neighbor disturbing ring images turned around of a dead eyes Mejia repeatedly stabbing the doorbell camera with a knife, causing it to be shattered.
The neighbor said that Mejia had repeatedly harassed him, according to the sources.
Albany in the way
Government Kathy Hochul is confronted with pushback from the state legislator about its proposal to curb the mental health crisis in New York City. The state meeting and the Senate have the parts of Hochul’s offer to fully renovate, completely omitted or deleted the parts of Hochul’s bid in their respective counter qualities for the Governor’s budget plan. Hochul’s proposal includes:
- Broadening the criteria in which a person can be forced in psychiatric treatment to incorporate situations in which their psychological problems prevent their basic needs such as food, clothing and medical care.
- Expanding the group of people who have the power to involuntarily bind someone to include psychiatric nurses.
- Streamlining of aspects of Kendra’s law, allowing a court to recommend persons with a mental illness to supported outpatient treatment.
But the next day he ran free on his own recognition because his crime was not eligible.
Mejia’s lawyer, Patrick Brackley, said on Friday that he was still trying to merge the history of his client. He wasn’t sure if Mejia should undergo a psych exam with one of his earlier cases.
“That is the heart of the case, because it is clearly a person who has already existing psychological problems, is unable, as we can now understand, to take care of themselves,” Brackley told the post. “So somewhere he was brought into a position where he did not get medicinal.”
The New York bail reform also recorded the hands of the judge in the doorbell case, said Beererow, a former public prosecutor in Manhattan.
Being eligible for bail and consideration of the potential danger of Mejia could have paved the way for an exam for mental competence, which could have been released instead of being released into the public.
“It is an example of someone who slides through the cracks,” said Boderow.
The police believe that a crazy, free Mejia had randomly cut the arm of a Straphanger’s arm on January 5 at a train station of Mott Haven.
A week later, Rijos walked to school past East 138th Street when Mejia stuck him twice in the chest, the police said.
Rijos shouted his father as he was dying and said he was scared and could not breathe, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark told reporters.
One of the neighbors of the Rijos family – Ideliz Rodriguez, 47 – said that the father of the teenager is a broken man and rarely talks since pointless stitches.
“He walks down with his head or looks straight ahead when he entered the building,” she said.
Elizabeth Lawson, another family friend, said that Rijos’s father is angry.
“He messed it up. He is always upset,” she said.
“This should never have happened. They always wait until something happens to do something.”
His friends and neighbors have set up a memorial in the lobby of the Rijos apartment building. They have posters and stuck balloons and flowers plastered along the tiled walls, which have been scribbled with message of love and calls for justice.
“Mental illness is not an excuse to take an innocent life!” Read one note.
– Additional reporting by Amanda Woods and Kyle Schnitzer
