Eighteen days later, on May 22, Sallee was arrested again, this
time for stealing a shopping cart. (Jailing of severely mentally ill
people for seemingly minor offenses is common across the country, in an
apparent attempt by police to get them off the streets on whatever
technicalities they can find. As a result, there are now about 100,000
people with schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis in U.S. prisons
and jails--more than in public mental hospitals.) After a Winn Dixie
manager had reported seeing Sallee take the cart, Officer William E.
Brough found him near the corner of Preston Highway and Chateau Lane,
where he was living in a ditch. Sallee told Officer Brough, "I gave you a
break. If I wanted to, I could have killed you. I will kill you when I
get out:
He was out again within days. For the next 20 months, he threatened
anyone who dared go near him. When his own sister, Sandra, approached him
on the street in the 1988 to offer him some warm clothing and money, he
threw a large rock at her and told her to go away or he would kill her.
The family's only recourse was to find out from police what his normal
roaming area was and stay dear of it. Hearing how bad things had gotten,
his father drove up from Georgia, where he had moved, to try and find his
son. He found him on the side of Preston Highway. But Mark didn't even
seem to recognize him.
On November 30, 1988, Mark walked into a branch of the First
National Bank, set down a piece of paper with his name, address, and a
number on it, and said to a clerk, "C.D." She asked if he wanted to buy a
Certificate of Deposit. Mark replied, "No, cash it." Checking the bank
records, she found that Mark had indeed bought a $5,000 C.D. two years
earlier (probably with money he had earned from the Army). The next day,
she gave him $5,478.76 in cash and change, representing the interest he
had earned.
Two days after Christmas, Mark took his money and went to a nearby
Herman's sporting goods store. He bought a Marlin 60 rifle, a red wooden
box of .22 caliber cartridges, and some rifle-cleaning equipment. A few
days later he returned and bought the blue snowmobile jumpsuit that he
would be wearing when he allegedly shot and killed Officer Pysher. Of
course, selling a gun to a mentally ill person is against the law in
Kentuck. And of course, had the federal Brady Bill been in effect in
1988, a police check during the required five-day waiting period would
have easily picked up Sallee's record of violence. Instead, it was up to
the Herman's employee to satisfy herself that Sallee was mentally
fit.
No one can say for certain where Mark was heading when Officer
Pysher stopped him on the Smyrna Road overpass, but this much is fact: He
had already walked more than two-miles from his campsite and was then
just one block from the house where he grew up, the same house where he
shot and killed his stepfather, the house where his sister Lisa now lived
with her husband and daughter. Officer Pysher might well have given up
his own life to save theirs.
In the absence of effective community mental-health programs, over
100,000 friends and family members of schizophrenics have organized
themselves into the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, with chapters
now located in every state.
Ultimately, the real solution to the tragedy of schizophrenia is to
find a cure. "Research is progressing at an accelerated pace," says Sam
Keith, M.D., former director of NIMWs schizophrenia research branch and
now head of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico. Even he admits,
though, that "many of our very fine treatments turn to trash when they're
not administered appropriately, either due to overtreatment with a
medication or undertreatment."
After being arrested for the killing of Officer Pysher, Mark Sallee
spent more than a year at the Fayette County Jail, without any treatment
whatsoever. On December 13, 1989, psychiatrist Robert P. Granacher, Jr.,
M.D., examined him in his cell and found him huddled nude, with a sheet
and blanket over his head. For 11 months Mark had sat psychotically mute
and motionless.
Within weeks of being ordered to begin antipsychotic medication at
Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center, Mark improved dramatically
enough to dress and dean himself, talk with guards and fellow patients,
and even show interest in watching television and having a cup of coffee.
Although he is not yet well enough to stand trial, if that day does come,
he will be prosecuted for murder in the first degree, and could end up on
death row.
This, then, is the ultimate irony of Mark Daniel Sallee's story:
the only reason a Kentucky court ever forced him to take his
antipsychotic medications was to make him well enough that they might one
day execute him.
"Its too late for my son," says his mother. "But there's so many
more out there."
ILLUSTRATION
TREATING SCHIZOPHRENIA
Whatever the causes of schizophrenia may be--genetic, obstetric,
viral, or environmental--the primary treatments is with any of more than
a dozen types of antipsychotic medications, including Thorazine,
Clozapine, and Haldol.
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