MARION, Va. â On a Friday morning in late November, Sgt. Josh Taylor and other Marion Police officers and Smyth County deputies responded to a report of a suicidal woman holding a knife to her chest.
Officers tried unsuccessfully to deescalate the situation and negotiate with the woman to drop her weapon, but the woman became violent, and the officers had to use a stun gun to subdue and disarm her, according to police accounts.
The woman was detained on an emergency custody order, also known as an ECO, and taken to the Smyth County Community Hospital, where she was evaluated by a crisis worker and determined to need treatment in a psychiatric facility. A magistrate issued a temporary detention order, or TDO, and then the only thing left was to locate an open bed in a psychiatric facility. And wait.
Doctor, wife sentenced for writing phony opioid prescriptions to Wythe County patients
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This illustration image shows tablets of opioid painkiller Oxycodon delivered on medical prescription. - Millions of Americans sank into addiction after using potent opioid painkillers that the companies churned out and doctors freely prescribed over the past two decades. Well over 400,000 people died of opioid overdoses in that period, while the companies involved raked in billions of dollars in profits. And while the flood of prescription opioids into the black market has now been curtailed, addicts are turning to heroin and highly potent fentanyl to compensate, where the risk of overdose and death is even higher. (Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images)
Jasmine Franks | Community Newspapers of Southwest Virginia
On a Friday morning in late November, Sgt. Josh Taylor and other Marion Police officers and Smyth County deputies responded to a report of a suicidal woman holding a knife to her chest.
Officers tried unsuccessfully to de-escalate the situation and negotiate with the woman to drop her weapon, but the woman became violent and the officers had to use a stun gun to subdue and disarm her, according to police accounts.
The woman was detained on an emergency custody order, also known as an ECO, and taken to the Smyth County Community Hospital, where she was evaluated by a crisis worker and determined to need treatment in a psychiatric facility. A magistrate issued a temporary detention order, or TDO, and then the only thing left was to locate an open bed in a psychiatric facility. And wait.