Schizophrenic acquitted due to insanity

LIHUE — A schizophrenic homeless man was acquitted Tuesday on burglary charges in two separate cases on the grounds that he was not responsible for the crimes due to mental illness.

George Simental, 30, faced up to 10 years in jail for a pair of felony burglary charges he picked up earlier this year after breaking into two North Shore homes in eight days.

According to police reports attached to court documents in Simental’s two most-recent cases, the incidents leading to his arrest unfolded like this:

The Kauai Police Department was dispatched to a residence on Kahill Quarry Road in Kilauea on the night of April 1 in response to calls reporting a burglary in progress. On his way to the scene, the responding officer was told by dispatch that a male suspect, possibly named George, “was attempting to flee, but the employees had him contained.”

Upon arrival at the home, police found “a thin male subject that was only wearing sox and pants laying on the walkway.” The officer said he recognized the man as Simental, and noted several articles of clothing, phone accessories, a bar of deodorant and a tube of Neosporin scattered on the ground nearby.

Simental had apparently made himself at home in the estate, a collection of four separate suites under a connected roof. Police found bare footprints on wooden stairs leading from the main building to a gym, where they found a basket of charging cords and adapters and another stick of Old Spice.

In his report, the arresting officer said it looked like Simental had used some medical supplies he found in one of the suites, where he had apparently slept on a couch. On the floor in front of the couch, the officer said he found “a dried liquid substance” and noted, “it also appeared that someone had urinated in the toilet but did not flush.”

Simental had changed into clothes he found in another suite and had a child’s backpack, and was preparing to leave the residence when employees of the estate confronted him.

One of the property employees who saw Simental walking out of one of the suites at around 11 p.m. later told police he didn’t know who the man was at first, and thought he might have been a guest of the owners, but when he approached the man, Simental “told him that he was there with John and began walking through the complex,” according to the police report.

While attempting to stop the man from leaving with the stolen items, the employee told police Simental “took a swing at him and grazed his left forehead.” The police report said one of the property owners arrived shortly after and pushed Simental into a pond as he tried to walk by.

Simental was arraigned the following week in Fifth Circuit Court, and pleaded not guilty to one count of burglary. Later the same day, a KPD officer identified Simental in the surveillance video footage of a gated community in Kilauea he had been called to a couple of weeks before, when a burglar alarm went off in an unoccupied home.

A little before midnight on March 24, the officer had responded to complaints about an alarm at a house on Iwalani lane, a mile down the road from the residence Simental would break into on April 1.

“I could faintly smell the odor of an alcoholic beverage inside the hallway,” the officer wrote in his report. “To my right was the mini-bar area. I saw a clear blue label whiskey bottle in the middle partially opened.”

Police found an open first aid kit on the kitchen counter with bandages and medicine scattered nearby, and food crumbs and open canned food in the kitchen and living room area. In the entertainment room, “where the television and a huge library of Blu-ray movies were,” the officer “observed spilled liquid” and smelled alcohol.

The officer’s report said he found loose change on the floor of a bedroom, and the bottom mattress of a bunk bed in the room “had a big wet spot with food crumbs.” In the master bedroom, police saw clothes scattered on the floor.

“I observed in the back of the residence a broken window screen and two wooden jalousies,” the police report continued. “There was also broken green whiskey bottle, a red lighter and a cigarette in the area. The window had a blue skinny jean pants stuck to the side.”

The owners of the home were out of town, and a search of the surrounding area turned up no further sign of the intruder. Other than the missing food and drinks, the property manager told police “nothing seems to be missing from the residence.”

Police dusted for fingerprints, but before analysis on the prints was completed, the property manager sent over surveillance footage and photos from the night of the break in. The officer saw Simental’s face in the video and recognized him from “previous encounters.”

Simental is no stranger to law enforcement. According to court records, he was arrested five times in the two years leading up to the recent break-ins. He was charged with trespassing twice in 2017 and again in April 2018. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail, but police arrested him the next month for shoplifting at the ABC Store in Kapaa. This time the sentence was five days.

A few days after his release, according to charging documents in yet another case against him, Simental committed “a lewd act which was likely to be observed by others who would be affronted or alarmed, to wit, by exposing his private parts to public view.” He got another 10 days in jail but was released, having already spent nearly a month in lockup awaiting trial.

The status of Simental’s mental health appears to be a matter of some debate. The court determined that he was mentally capable of facing charges in all three cases in 2018, but both of his trespassing charges had been dismissed less than a year before, after doctors found him unfit to proceed.

After interviewing Simental and reviewing his medical records, Tom Cunningham, Ph.D., wrote a report to the judge presiding over Simental’s then-pending trespassing cases.

“Mr. Simental’s capacity to understand the proceedings against him, to assist in his own defense and to consult with an attorney with a reasonable degree of rational understanding was grossly impaired by mental disorder,” Cunningham wrote in a September 2017. “He lacked both the understanding and the will to behave in accordance with the statute he is accused of violating.”

At the time of the interview, Simental was being held in an infirmary at the Oahu Community Correctional Center, where Cunningham said “he would occasionally ask for food or drink and could sometimes be led to a bathroom by an aide.”

“When I passed through the infirmary on the way to review records, the defendant was sitting on the side of his bed holding half a sandwich and motionless,” Cunningham noted. “When I returned to meet with him, he was in the same position with the sandwich untouched.”

In a report to the judge he had written a month before, Cunningham reached the same conclusion, recommending both times that Simental be committed to the custody of the state director of the state Department of Health for care and his own protection.

“When I met with Mr. Simental, I believed he posed a substantial risk of danger to himself due to his limited self-care skills,” Cunningham wrote on Sept. 25, 2017.

“Even under supervision at Kauai Community Correctional Center, he became dehydrated prior to his transfer to OCCC. He has a major mental illness with currently active symptoms.”

Simental was remanded to the care of the DOH director, but it is unclear from court records how long he spent at a state mental-health facility. Less than eight months later, a judge ruled that he was mentally capable of understanding the charges against him.

His mental health would be assessed similarly in the next four cases brought against him over the next year.

On Tuesday, after a non-jury trial, he was once again determined to be mentally incompetent and ordered back into the custody of the director of health.

How long Simental will spend in the state mental hospital is set to be determined at a court hearing in November, when a judge will rule on whether he is a danger to the public.

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Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.