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DA: Crazed woman with knife goes after two young children in the West End
By adamg on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 4:50pm
A mother used her body as a shield to try to block a woman waving a large knife at her two young children in the West End yesterday - 19 years after the woman was acquitted by reason of insanity for repeatedly stabbing another mother in a Charlestown supermarket.
Suffolk County prosecutors say that Diane Huggins, 58, approached a 35-year-old Back Bay woman and her children, 1 and 4, as the trio walked along Thoreau Path around 2 p.m. yesterday - and then began swinging a large knife at the children. According to a statement by the Suffolk County District Attorney's office:
The mother told Boston Police that she spun the stroller away, placing herself between the assailant and the children. A brief physical altercation ensued in which both women went to the ground. At that moment, a passerby – later identified as a 72-year-old West End resident – intervened, disarmed Huggins, and tossed the knife away from the fracas. The man held Huggins until Boston Police arrived a few moments later.
Boston Municipal Court judge Thomas Horgan set bail at $25,000 on two counts each of assault with a dangerous weapon and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, the DA's office reports.
In 1993, Huggins was arrested after she repeatedly stabbing a woman shopping with her child at the Foodmaster in the Bunker Hill Mall in Charlestown. She was found not responsible by reason of insanity for the attack, which sent the victim to the hospital with stab wounds to her face, back and chest.
That attack came eight years after she was charged with stabbing a four-year-old boy outside the Roxbury apartment building where both lived.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
THE HELL?!
I'm sorry -- what?
This woman repeatedly STABS people -- mothers and children -- and she's found not guilty by reason of insanity, and she's not institutionalized or put somewhere for the criminally insane? That's a crazy legacy of random, unprovoked acts against vulnerable people. She's not trying to shiv people in a back alley after they've scuffled over a bag of heroin someone dropped or letting someone know that Whitey doesn't appreciate their tip to the FBI, she's TRYING TO STAB OR STABBING BABIES.
That 72 year old man deserves some serious kudos, and I hope this is the act of crazy that keeps crazy locked up for a much longer time. Though I'm incredulous she's still swinging on the streets, somehow I doubt it.
Response to The Hell
She also lives on Martha Rd at Charles River Park as well! She's in one of these so-called luxury apts.! Thank you Mr. Mayor.
Oh this is rich!
I see how sometimes it might make sense to not send people to prison because they're insane... but crap like this!?!? She goes on to do the same thing over and over and no one is doing anything about it. The only medicine for people like her is trying to break into the house of someone like me - i'll blow her head off before she remembers in which hand her knife is. And now the government wants to take away our guns. This isn't going to end well. Here is why we need guns! It's obvious that the police won't be able to preserve our safety once citizens lose the right to protect themselves. So what then? We all invest in security systems? See, an alarm is not expensive (free with a contract) but you'll continue to pay the monthly monitoring fee for as long as you have it (for life?). That's exactly what the government wants - citizens paying protection money to the corporations! Why? Because corporations now run the US. Make lobbying illegal! It's bribery!
How is she not
How is she not institutionalized as a danger to herself and others?
There are no mental hospitals
There are no mental hospitals anymore and patients are housed in public housing throughout the city. This women lives in Charles River Park itself. The press never tell you such things.
How can it be??
How is it possible that this person is not locked away in some asylum somewhere? Society has clearly failed in that this individual is still on the streets. She should be locked away somewhere for good. Asylum, or jail.
and there, ladies and gentlemen, is your gender bias
Like that woman who shot and killed her brother with a shotgun - women can literally get away with murder (or, in this case, attempted murder - twice!)
Please tell me why someone who has a history of armed, violent attack who randomly attacks a mother and children...is not held for psychiatric evaluation or simply for being a serious and immediate threat to public safety?!)
Once they are found NGRI
Once they are found NGRI (not guilty by reason of insanity) they (females) go to a state hospital the males often go to Bridgewater and then to a state hospital when they are stable, when they have been stable for at least a year or so there is pressure on the drs and sws to get them discharged to a group home or a less secure setting, they don't keep people in the hospital a long time anymore. The staff are constantly getting assaulted, the public rarely hears about it. They keep decreasing the staff to save money. Just my opinion.
Exactly...
...and you rarely hear about it because one of the Patrick Administration's top priorities is to completely deinstitutionalize ALL healthcare, even for those who SHOULD be institutionalized. See the push to close Taunton Hospital? It's all about defunding these necessary state institutions and kicking the money out to the for-profit vendors who administer "community-based" programs. SUCH a scam, not to mention a societal hazard. Unbelievable that Patrick's so tone deaf, given his wife's history of behavioral health issues. Must be lots of $$$$ to be made in for-profit, community-based care.
See below
Ain't just Patrick, and it's a Red/Blue/Culture issue instead. He's part of the problem, but so is public opinion and both party platforms.
People just think it's not worth the costs, while refusing to change the laws on the books. But we have a long history of realizing that these people are not criminals, and treating them differently; as we should. Maybe public perception has changed to a "just lock em all up", but the laws haven't and there's no push to do so.
These "for-profit" vendors
These "for-profit" vendors you mention do not exist. The vendors doing the community work of housing and managing people living with persistent mental illness are NON-PROFITS staffed by people who by and large are in it because they care, not for the money(most are under-payed for the work they do). The Mental health system is under funded by the citizens of Massachusetts and sending people with mental illness back to the large state hospitals is a reactionary and ignorant "solution" to the problem at hand.
WHY?
Easy, years of attacks from both the Right AND the Left.
Biggest issue is there is literally no way to institutionalize anyone anymore, especially before the fact of a violent crime. It was attacked on the right as a waste of money, and on the left as an affront to civil liberties and rights.
Who says the right and left can never come together?!
While I am open to the concerns of both sides, the right thing to do is not to just leave people, that are dangerous to themselves and others, on the street. If you're crazy and violent, you're crazy and violent. You don't have the faculties over your own behavior, and the state then needs to assume responsibility in being your legal guardian.
We don't just let young children free to their own fate when they have a lack of guardianship. The mentally disturbed should be treated the same from a culture and social responsibility standpoint.
Unfortunate, that's "big government" and a "diminishing of adult rights". It means we have to pay for it, and there's serious questions on who exactly is not able to control their own faculty, and how we determine it.
But if it keeps a crazy women trying to stab mothers and young children in an medical institution; so be it.