Dreyfoos School intruder in hospital the night before for mental problems, friends say

WEST PALM BEACH — The day after a chaotic crash and confrontation in the hall of Dreyfoos School of the Arts led to a schoolwide lockdown and fatal police shooting, alumni gathered at the school to confront a shattering revelation.

The man police said crashed his van through the gates of the school, struggled with staff and raced toward classrooms before police shot him was one of their own.

Romen Phelps, a 2007 Dreyfoos school graduate, liked and valued by staff and theater students, honored with a scholarship award, was funny, kind, caring and loved the school that had been like a second home to him, they said.

But he also had recently hospitalized, had long been struggling with his mental health and worried about what would happen to him.

Shooting at Dreyfoos School of the Arts: Van driver was fighting school officer at Dreyfoos when city police arrived, shot him dead

What we know: Van driver fatally shot by West Palm police on Dreyfoos campus

Phelps, 33, of Palm Beach Gardens, was identified Friday night as the driver of the van, who was shot dead in the theater when he "violently attacked" an off-duty city police officer who had responded to the scene, police said.

Students were on campus at the time of the incident, which occurred about noon Friday and caused a lockdown and panic among students and parents. Students were not in the main theater hall where the shooting happened, according to West Palm Beach police. Police said no students or faculty were injured during the incident.

Phelps, after crashing his van, tried to enter classrooms before attacking a school officer, then a West Palm Beach police officer, before that officer shot him, according to an email sent late Friday by West Palm Beach Police spokesman Mike Jachles

Skyler E. Meany was a theater student a year behind Phelps at Dreyfoos and a friend for many years after, playing music together and producing work at Skyler’s radio station, including spoken poetry from Phelps.

On Saturday, he stood on the sidewalk on the north side of the campus hoping to tell anyone who would listen that Phelps indeed had mental health issues, and they had taken a troubling turn in recent days. But also, Meany said, he was the friend he had always known.

That was the person who stayed in touch with teachers and students he had known there, who worked as both a master electrician and creative entrepreneur in theater projects, who was reliable and who no one could picture harming anyone.

“He was just an amazing person,” said Meany, who came back to his alma mater with two other friends of Phelps to share this message: “We wanted to let people know he wasn’t some kind of monster.”

Phelps clearly needed help, all three agreed.

“Just a month or so (ago) he started giving off a manic sort of vibe little tidal waves,” Meany said.

Want the latest news in your area?

Download the Palm Beach Post app and be in control of your news alerts. Download the FREE app here.

On Thursday, the two were at Meany’s house in Palm Beach Gardens when the vibe radiating off Phelps made Meany feel “unsafe.”

“In retrospect, I realize he was not trying to hurt us, he was trying to get us to hurt him,” Meany said. “He wanted to be in a jail cell or someplace where he wouldn’t be a danger to himself.”

Police were called and Phelps went to the hospital, but they didn’t keep him beyond midnight, Meany said. Phelps later returned to collect his van and his wallet.

“He said they tried to slow him down at the hospital with medicines and they couldn’t,” Meany recalled.

Early Friday morning he sent an invitation to a play he was planning to stage to a Dreyfoos teacher he had stayed in touch with. He posted on social media about a musician he admired.

Upon learning about a van crashing the gates at the school, Meany said he and his girlfriend, Abeni Matthews, had a feeling it was Phelps. And Meany wasn’t surprised Phelps headed for the school theater.

“It was one of his favorite places on Earth. One of the places he felt most comfortable,” Meany said. Meany has heard Phelps stopped in his stage tech mentor’s workshop on the way to the theater. Ed Blanchette was no longer there; he died in 2021.

Others who remember Phelps from his days as the creative technician who could be counted on to do the hard work behind the scenes at the theater also thought about where he died.

"A part of me is wondering if he was struggling to get there for refuge," his classmate from the class of 2007, Scott Berko said.

"I knew him, I knew Dreyfoos," Berko said. "we always felt safe there."

The Dreyfoos school, Berko said, was a place "we were comfortable being ourselves."

"The outside world isn't so accepting, sometimes," he added.

By Friday 15 years had passed since Phelps left a school where teachers nominating him for a Pathfinder scholarship award wrote of him as a "leader" and a "shining star. "He teaches us everyday with his attitude," Dreyfoos stagecraft instructor Ed Blanchette wrote.

Dean of Theatre Beverly Blanchette wrote in her nomination of Phelps of when he lit a benefit performance for the son of a school police officer who had been paralyzed in a car accident.

"This effort," she wrote, "attests to Romen's character and strength as a human being."

She wrote that "he is always responsible, diligent, pleasant to work with."

A local independent businessman who hired Phelps to wire a hot water heater earlier this year described similar traits.

"I'm building houses right now, and he's the first person I thought of as a team member," Daniel Kiernik said. "I was thinking of him yesterday."

But Phelps had been struggling longer than some around him knew.

Phelps had a history of "manic depressant bipolar," according to a petition for an injunction against domestic violence that Kimberly Dennisson filed in August 2020. She said he'd been involuntarily committed to a hospital for mental illness three times and needed medication for mental health problems. She wasn't sure whether he was taking the medication at the time.

She said he'd banged on the windows at her workplace "in an aggressive manner" and left her threatening voicemail messages.

"Between barging in my employer's office, up and down bipolar, not sure what he'll do next," the petition reads.

The judge granted the injunction. Phelps was not allowed to have firearms.

Dad rushes to Dreyfoos after daughter's text: 'We are on a code red .. its real. I love you'

'All of a sudden we hear screaming': Students tell what happened inside Dreyfoos during shooting

According to police, the Friday's fatal incident began when West Palm Beach police were alerted to a van heading the wrong way on Banyan Boulevard near Australian Avenue, four blocks north of the school.

Soon after, a van matching the description heading down Tamarind Avenue crashed through locked gates at the Dreyfoos campus, at 501 S. Sapodilla Ave.

Police said the van continued through the campus, struck a breezeway, an overhang and almost hit a school worker in a golf cart before hitting a palm tree and coming to a stop. That's when the school initiated a Code Red lockdown, according to police.

Police said witnesses saw Phelps get out of the van and run past students outside eating lunch then into a building. A school resource officer and the school's principal confronted Phelps inside the building, where police said Phelps got into a physical altercation with the officer and broke free, running towards the school's auditorium.

Police said an off-duty West Palm Beach police officer driving near the school at the time responded to the call for emergency backup and arrived soon after. The officer approached Phelps, who, according to police, "violently attacked the responding off-duty officer, who was forced to discharge his weapon, firing one round."

Other officers soon arrived and began CPR in an attempt to resuscitate Phelps, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene by the West Palm Beach Fire Department.

Police have not identified the officer who pulled the trigger. Per department protocol following a shooting, that officer is on paid leave, Jachles said.

Recently, Phelps called longtime friend Jermaine Williams, with a curse-filled rant about a T-shirt he wanted back. “He got into a fit of rage” that surprised Williams.

Williams, who'd been friends with Phelps since they both attended Bak Middle School of the Arts, had the shirt in question, one that carried the name of Phelps’ business. And Williams was ready to return it, but suggested meeting at the Okeechobee Boulevard Starbucks, a public space just in case, he said.

When Phelps arrived, he was back to normal, Williams said. Phelps said he was dealing with “anger issues.” He told Williams “he’d been Baker Acted the day I spoke to him about the T-shirt.”

Williams believes the system failed Phelps. “That wasn’t a treatment, that was a catch-and-release.”

He too said Dreyfoos, and the theater, referred to by staff and students as Building 7, had a strong draw for Phelps.

Meany and Phelps had a recent conversation in which Phelps invoked the image of a phoenix rising from the ashes. Meany wonders whether his poet friend didn’t seek the stage to grab a new beginning from an end.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Romen Phelps, the Dreyfoos intruder, had been in hospital for mental health