This murder in Billings, Montana, reported today by the Billings Gazette, is a good example of why some people who have some very serious mental disorders must stay in locked mental hospitals:
A Billings man who has been in and out of Warm Springs State Hospital was arrested without incident Tuesday on suspicion of stabbing his childhood friend to death.
Donald Eli Kruger, 35, is being held in the Yellowstone County Detention Facility on suspicion of deliberate homicide in connection with the death of Jeremiah Fritz.
If the law did not require him to be let "free" from the hospital, the person who made the decision that he was not a danger should be fired. If the law required Kruger no longer live in a locked mental hospital, that law needs to be changed immediately.
Court filings indicate a request for a mental health evaluation for Kruger was filed in that case as recently as Nov. 6.
Kruger, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, was committed to Montana State Hospital after being found mentally unfit to stand trial at least twice in the last five years.
In the latest instance, the city of Billings paid for a commitment in 2008 after Kruger was charged with assaulting two women who were walking together on the South Side. According to court records, Kruger is accused of grabbing the women’s breasts when he passed them on the street, and slamming one into a fence and punching the other repeatedly when they objected.
He was also found incompetent to stand trial in 2005 on a felony charge for indecent exposure. In that case, Kruger was accused of masturbating in front of a woman at the Montana State University Billings library.
Since the early 1990s, Kruger has been charged with more than 20 misdemeanor offenses and three felony offenses. In a number of cases, Kruger sent rambling letters to the court professing his innocence and begging for help.
One undated letter came in an envelope with a penciled drawing of a sharp-toothed skull with bulging eyes.
The letter pleads for help from Judge Pedro Hernandez and reads in part:
“(I was) tricked into entering pleas that give away rights that this court keeps taking advantage of I am an innocent man and not a pervert like these hateful persons suggest in information I was not aware was filed against me until it was to late now that I want to fight for my right for trial and showed good cause the two judges are conspiring with this cop and punishing me with crimes I can’t fight because there just ment to slander me further misleading conjectural ennuendoes with no prima facie until the cop gets involved and misrepresents information or leads witnesses in their statements . . . “
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