The State of Maryland vs. a young woman with schizophrenia

A pair of city police officers pulled their patrol vehicle behind a red Mazda stopped around 4 p.m. on a dreary day last winter in the middle of the road in an industrial stretch of South Baltimore.

The car was running, hazard lights flashing. The windshield wipers squeaked across the glass. Inside, the officers found the car keys and a wallet.

But the driver was nowhere to be found.

“It don’t make sense,” Officer Shyheim Moore told Officer Kevin Retamales. “Where would you go?”

Moore and Retamales, who between the two of them had less than five years on the job, contemplated what happened to whoever was in the car, according to video captured by their body cameras. They checked to see if the car had been reported stolen — it wasn’t — and for any recent reports of abductions — there were none.

After about 20 minutes, another vehicle parked behind the officers. Angelina Bolan, 22, got out of the driver’s seat of a black Nissan and walked by the officers carrying a gas can. Her behavior didn’t make sense to the officers.

“A lot of people that run out of gas kind of take their wallet with them and then they lock the car,” Retamales said to her. “You see what I’m saying?”

“Locking the car does not help with gas,” Bolan responded.

She had a history of serious mental health conditions — diagnoses that might cause someone to lose touch with reality, struggle processing information and experience episodes of paranoia and rage. But police didn’t recognize that she was in a crisis.

The rapidly escalating encounter on Jan. 3, 2023, ended with the officers arresting Bolan, bypassing resources for people in mental crisis and thrusting her into a legal system ill-equipped to help people with mental illness.

She languished behind bars before agreeing to a special mental health court program.

About eight months after her arrest, while immersed in the special court program, Bolan died by suicide.

‘Consequence, punishment, consequence’

It’s impossible to know whether her untimely death could have been prevented, but her family wants to call attention to what they say is a lack of compassion for those with mental health issues in Baltimore’s criminal justice and health systems. Even the docket set up to help such defendants can let them down and sometimes torment them.

Bolan experienced a police supervisor’s indifference, a parole agent who cited symptoms of her psychiatric condition as cause for concern in court, and a judge who threatened to send her back to jail. These moments, mental health experts briefed on Bolan’s story said, lay bare the shortcomings in public safety and mental health systems.

“This highlights more stigma — more stigma within the law enforcement, stigma with individuals and just oppression,” said Adrienne Breidenstine, vice president of Behavioral Health System Baltimore, a nonprofit that runs the city’s behavioral health system.

“The approach is: Consequence, punishment, consequence,” Breidenstine said. “It’s not very trauma-informed. It doesn’t lift people up, it just pushes you down. That’s how these systems were designed, and they don’t work for health care, and certainly not mental health care.”

Kerry Graves, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s Metropolitan Baltimore branch, said Bolan’s experience raises questions that transcend law enforcement.

“Clearly, there was an issue here with how the police responded,” Graves said. “However, should they have been responding in the first place? Should someone else have been called?”

The story began in South Baltimore, where the two young policemen worried about a pair of cars impeding traffic as rush hour approached. Tractor-trailers passed as Moore and Retamales repeatedly explained to Bolan she needed to move both cars.

Her struggles with those commands led the officers to wonder aloud if she was intoxicated. Bolan had returned to the scene with her mother’s then-fiance, who told officers she didn’t drink.

“But,” the man said, “she has, uh, a mental health — mental illness.”

From lighthearted to delusional: ‘She’s gonna get in trouble’

Born in Maryland, Bolan moved around the country with her father, a restaurateur, until about age 14.

“I never had any problems with her growing up,” her dad, Mark Bolan, said. “She was just a really loving daughter.”

After Bolan came back to Maryland, she enrolled at Broadneck High School in Anne Arundel County. Maddie Whitaker remembers being drawn to Bolan’s bubbly personality when they met in social studies. They “became inseparable,” with regular trips to Dunkin and long walks after school, during which they’d chat about almost anything.

Bolan’s parents filed for divorce in 2017. It was a tumultuous split.

Whitaker remembers when she realized how much her friend was struggling. She visited Bolan, who was working at Target, at some point during the coronavirus pandemic that started in 2020.

“She was working and was telling me the people walking down the aisles were following her, and things like that, when they weren’t,” Whitaker said. “It was just people shopping.”

To Whitaker, it seemed like her friend was fine one moment and not the next.

At home, Bolan increasingly became consumed by hallucinations and delusions, according to her family.

“She never thought anybody was real or who they were,” her mother, Kim Lewis, said. “She would always come up to people — she’d look at me, ‘You’re not my mom. You’re not my mom.’ I was the fairy lady.”

With her daughter’s mental health deteriorating, Lewis felt she had nowhere left to turn but the courts. Lewis convinced judges in Anne Arundel, where they lived, to have police take her into custody for emergency evaluations four times in 2021 and 2022, according to court records.

“I remember telling the judge, one of the last ones, I said, ‘She’s gonna get in trouble.’ I specifically said that she is going to get in trouble with the law. I said, ‘I know it. She needs help. She needs to go … somewhere long-term. She needs long-term help,’” Lewis said.

Doctors admitted Bolan to the hospital for psychiatric care each time she was taken by police. But Lewis said the hospitalizations rarely lasted long and lacked comprehensive follow-up care.

“It’s almost like they’re checking boxes legally, to say, ‘Well, we gave an improvement plan. We gave them their meds and we gave them the prescription when they left.’ And then there’s nothing,” Bolan’s uncle, Marty Lewis, said.

MedStar Health’s Harbor Hospital sent Bolan home with a “crisis safety plan” after a weeklong stay in the fall of 2021, during which doctors diagnosed her with schizoaffective disorder, depressive type, according to her discharge papers.

On the plan, Bolan wrote down the things she thought were worth living for: her family, her “girl clique,” nature and education. The back page of the plan allowed her to add something unprompted: “I love my life and can’t wait until it goes back to normal and is mine again.”

She listed healthy coping mechanisms she was supposed to turn to if she realized she was slipping into a crisis. One of them was driving.

Her family said she often forgot to fill the car with gas.

‘She’s going to jail. She just spit on a cop.’

With the officers close behind, Bolan pulled her Mazda over on the side of Chemical Road, between a shipping company and a trucking business.

When Bolan got out of the car, she cursed and yelled at Moore and Retamales. Her mother’s then-fiance, Charles Grierson, who was intoxicated, scolded her and apologized to the officers. As Bolan walked away, he told them she had schizophrenia.

Two minutes later, Bolan returned in the black Nissan. She opened the door, took a step toward the officers and spit in their direction. Then, she continued seven paces more toward Retamales and spit at him.

While the officers handcuffed her, Bolan turned her head in Moore’s direction and spit again.

“She’s going to jail,” Moore said. “She just spit on a cop.” He and Retamales placed her in the back of their patrol car and summoned backup.

“Hey god! That was for you, b—-!” Bolan yelled from the car.

Grierson pleaded with the officers not to take Bolan to jail.

Related Articles

• Health | Calls to Maryland’s suicide and crisis hotline up since switch to 988 a year ago

• Health | Glenelg High School mourns, centers mental health services after two students violently killed

In response to questions from The Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore Police Department acknowledged that Bolan appeared to be in a mental crisis. It confirmed that none of the six police officers who responded that afternoon requested an officer with additional mental health training, nor asked for non-law enforcement resources for people in crisis.

A police spokesperson said the officers didn’t have to call the department’s specially trained Crisis Response Team because Bolan was “not physically combative.” The spokesperson said non-police resources were inappropriate because Bolan was under arrest. As for the absence of crisis intervention officers — police who undergo extra mental health training — the spokesperson said the Public Integrity Bureau was reviewing the incident.

The last officer at the scene of Bolan’s arrest was Sgt. Joshua Corcoran, a 16-year veteran and the officers’ supervisor. When Corcoran arrived, Moore and Retamales told him Grierson had informed them Bolan had schizophrenia.

“That’s her problem,” Corcoran responded.

Bolan hurled a barrage of insults at officers who searched her for weapons. At one point, she said she was going to take her own life. Corcoran told Moore and Retamales to take her to Harbor Hospital, the closest emergency department.

“Just make sure you tell them in the ER that she’s under arrest and because she’s under arrest, she’s trying to claim that she’s suicidal,” Corcoran said. “They will just have the doctor come out and talk to her there and that’s it.”

With each officer holding one arm, they led Bolan into the ER. She told Moore she would kill him “if she could,” before turning to Retamales and saying the same and kicking at him.

She was in the hospital — the same place she had spent more than a week hospitalized about a year earlier — for about 15 minutes before the officers walked her out to their patrol car, according to their time-stamped body camera footage.

In a statement, MedStar Health said “we extend our sympathy” to Bolan’s family. It declined to comment on her care, citing federal patient privacy laws.

After the hospital, the officers took her to Baltimore Central Booking and charged her with two counts of misdemeanor assault.

A month in prison and a judge’s pitch

A judge ordered Bolan held without bond on Jan. 6, 2023, and asked state doctors to evaluate her competency to stand trial. Bolan spent about a month behind bars as doctors and lawyers debated whether she could understand the charges and the basics of the court system.

Meanwhile, the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services transferred Bolan from Central Booking to the Correctional Institution for Women, a prison in Jessup. A corrections spokesperson said detainees sometimes are moved to a prison to better meet the person’s needs.

Bolan seemed to lose track of time in her cell, according to a journal entry. The entry was dated Jan. 15, 2023, but she mistakenly wrote she’d been at the prison for more than a month. She complained about the “blank room,” while longing for the comforts of her cellphone and electronic cigarette.

“God please send me an angel to send me home,” Bolan wrote.

The very next line on the page demonstrated the types of thoughts that relatives said had begun to consume her mind.

“Hello Ally’s mom who shouldn’t be reading my journal right now because it’s none of your business,” Bolan wrote, then crossed out.

Her neat pen strokes became messy as she wrote about being controlled by Satan.

A state psychiatrist wrote an opinion Jan. 19, 2023, saying Bolan was incompetent to stand trial and would present a danger to herself or others if released. The doctor diagnosed Bolan with schizophrenia and said she experienced hallucinations — hearing, seeing, smelling or feeling things that aren’t really there.

Bolan’s attorney, Jennifer Alexander, challenged the doctor’s findings at her client’s next court hearing, Jan. 23, 2023. Alexander told District Judge Rachel E. Skolnik she’d met with Bolan at the prison for 40 minutes and believed she met the legal standard for competency.

She said her client was complying with the medication prescribed by the prison psychiatrist, and was prepared to continue outpatient treatment if released. Further incarceration would exacerbate Bolan’s mental health problems, Alexander said. She said Bolan had already served more time locked up than she likely would have if she’d been convicted and sentenced, given her lack of a criminal record.

“So, here’s the issue,” Skolnik said, “I have a report that is less than two weeks old, indicating that at the time of the report the defendant said that she was going to be sent to the ‘reptilian realm’ if she did not obey the hallucinations and that she asked if she could get the death penalty, indicated that she wished she could die.”

Over Bolan’s cries, the judge ordered her held without bond.

By the next hearing, Feb. 2, 2023, the doctor who originally evaluated Bolan said he believed she was competent.

Skolnik released Bolan and encouraged her to consider participating in the specialized court docket she presides over: Mental Health Court. Bolan would have to plead guilty to the charges, receive a sentence that involved a unique kind of probation and sign a treatment contract.

“It would be a very good fit for you,” Skolnik told Bolan. “It’s between you and your attorney to decide if it’s appropriate and that’s what you want to do. But you would have a whole team of people really working to make sure you’re doing well and staying out in the community and healthy and productive. OK?”

‘Be respectful … or I lock you up’

Bolan’s first mental health court appointment lasted about four minutes, and the lawyers spent much of the time brainstorming how Bolan could remember to attend her therapy appointments, such as placing a note on the refrigerator. She was “a little bit forgetful,” as her probation agent later put it.

She pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree assault, a deal that would allow her to expunge that conviction from her record if she completed probation. Skolnik sentenced her to two years of probation in mental health court.

Not until her third court date, on June 12, 2023, did anyone raise a concern. In court that day, the probation agent said Bolan became “very agitated,” and seemed “very nervous” and “a little paranoid” when asked how she handled rescheduling appointments.

“She made the statement that this was ‘not a real probation. That this was a mental health court probation,’” the agent said in court. “When I explained to her that this was a very real probation with very real consequences, she began to cry, claimed that agent [sic] had threatened her.”

Assistant State’s Attorney Jennifer Wohlfort asked District Judge Theresa C. Morse to require Bolan to appear for her court in person, rather than by video call, to remind her “that this is real. This is serious.”

Alexander noted Bolan hadn’t missed therapy, rescheduled the medication appointment she missed and reported to her probation agent, as required. The defense attorney said certain comments from authorities, such as the prospect of reincarceration, alarmed her client.

“We have to meet Ms. Bolan where she is,” Alexander told Morse.

Morse, one of three judges assigned to mental health court, ordered Bolan to appear in person at the next hearing.

By the July 17 court date, her probation agent filed a petition for a violation of probation. In her report, the agent accused Bolan of missing multiple therapy appointments, though she’d missed only one. The probation agent also said Bolan hadn’t been taking her medication, and lamented her “failure to be forthright” about that, according to the report.

When a doctor asked Bolan about how she was able to take her medicine without having refilled her prescription, the agent wrote, Bolan allegedly “became angry with the doctor, accused her of being against her, called her a racial slur and hung up the phone.”

The corrections department declined to comment on the agent’s actions or make her available for an interview. It said agents receive basic training in understanding and working with people with mental health issues.

In court, Alexander attributed Bolan’s lack of medication to an insurance coverage problem.

“I explained to Ms. Bolan this morning that this is exactly what mental health court is supposed to be about. It’s not supposed to be about punitive,” Alexander said. “It’s not supposed to be about ‘gotcha.’ It’s not supposed to be about loading so much on someone who has active schizophrenia, and then saying, ‘We’re violating your probation, you’re going to jail.’”

“She is afraid,” the defense lawyer continued, “if she’s honest, with the folks that are trying to help her, that they will take action against her, instead of actually trying to help her. I’m not saying that’s reality. That’s part of the challenge of mental health, is their reality is not necessarily the reality.”

Morse expressed concerns in court that day, but left it up to Skolnik, the judge whom Bolan reported to for probation, to decide any punishment.

Three days later, Assistant State’s Attorney Irene Dey, who along with Wohlfort is assigned to mental health court, cited Bolan’s lack of medication as cause to be concerned “for public safety reasons.”

Alexander countered that Bolan had worked out the problem with her insurance provider and was scheduled to receive her medication injection that day, as well as attend therapy.

“I believe the issue was a minor hiccup in terms of Ms. Bolan overall,” Alexander said.

But Skolnik scolded Bolan for smoking an electronic cigarette and talking to her mom on a previous video hearing, telling her she was “not appearing as if you really care very much about your freedom.”

“I’m not playing this game with you where you’re a young woman who is timid and scared. I’m not, because I don’t buy it for a second, OK?” Skolnik told Bolan. “So here’s your choice: You either get back on track, take your medication, be respectful to those around you, be respectful to [the probation agent], be respectful to your attorney, be respectful to the doctors. Or I lock you up.”

Skolnik granted prosecutors’ request to prevent Bolan from being allowed to drive, but stopped short of issuing a violation of probation. She scheduled another hearing for two weeks later.

The Maryland Judiciary declined to make Skolnik available for an interview.

Bolan was shaking and crying in the courthouse hallway after the hearing, recalled Lewis, who was there. Lewis drove Bolan to her appointments later the same day, and remembers her daughter was “terrified” because she was convinced she’d be sent back to jail.

On July 25, 2023, five days after court, Bolan’s father checked in with her by text.

“I’m doing OK just have been going through a lot with mental health court,” Bolan texted him in response. “I want it to be over with already dad.”

The next day, Maryland Transportation Authority Police officers found Bolan’s red Mazda abandoned on the eastbound span of the Bay Bridge around 5 a.m. Hours later, a boater found her body in the water.

If you or a loved one are experiencing mental health concerns or crisis, you can contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988.