By Joy Bergmann
A shock of recognition shot through multiple Upper West Siders last week upon learning of Beatriz Diaz’s death.
Over the past two months, each one had identified her as a homeless woman in crisis. Screaming at invisible foes. Crying through thick glasses. Placing her slight frame in harm’s way.
Each tried, in their own way, to bring rescuers to her aid. But the system responsible for protecting her ultimately did not.
According to police sources, on January 24th, Diaz, 43, lay down in the crosswalk at 93rd and Amsterdam Avenue. A turning Nissan van then struck and killed her. Her bizarre action did not surprise NYPD officers at the scene; they knew her history of doing so.
Diaz’s end was the terrible fulfillment of a premonition felt weeks ago.
At the 24th Precinct Community Council meeting on December 15th, WSR heard Robert, a regular attendee, speak with great frustration and concern. He’d twice called 911 in a single week, trying to get help for a woman he’d seen lying in the street near his home.
“She was wearing dark clothing and making it hard for people not to hit her,” Robert recalled in a phone call with WSR. “Each time I approached her and asked ‘are you alright?’ she’d start screaming.”
WSR asked the NYPD to quantify how many times they had responded to 911 calls about Diaz putting herself in danger. The NYPD did not answer, referring us only to their statement about her death.
However, multiple WSR readers have shared their recent encounters with Diaz. We spoke with several and received emails from others, compiling the following timeline based on their reports. [Sources with an * are WSR commenters who didn’t return emails seeking further details.]
December 7th: Robert calls 911 at 12:44 p.m. after seeing Diaz lying face down on West End Avenue near 100th St. NYPD responds. Diaz reportedly flails when officers attempt to assist her. They restrain her. EMS takes Diaz away in an ambulance.
[No further specifics may be obtained about this or any other interaction. The HIPAA Privacy Rule protects an individual’s medical information while alive and for 50 years after death.]
December 14th: Robert calls 911 at 6:30 p.m. upon noticing Diaz lying on 100th Street just east of West End. NYPD responds. She answers their questions lucidly, so the police tell her to move to some nearby stairs. She complies with their instruction.
December 16th: Around 4:30 p.m, Christina sees Diaz sitting on West End Avenue near 95th, “shrieking and crying like something horrible had just happened to her.” Told by a doorman that 911 had been called, Christina continued on.
~Christmas: Commenter GG* sees Diaz lying in the crosswalk near Amsterdam and 92nd. Called 911 and EMS arrived.
~Christmas: NYPD responds to an unspecified incident concerning Diaz at an UWS church, police sources told WSR.
~December 31: Christina sees Diaz “crying and agitated” on the stoop of a brownstone on 93rd between Broadway and West End. NYPD officers were present, speaking with her.
~January 4th: A woman who asked to be identified as RWC calls 911 upon seeing Diaz sitting in the crosswalk at 94th and Central Park West. Diaz looked “unfocused”, was screaming “incoherently” and pounding the ground with her hands. Diaz ran off before help arrived.
~January: Commenter Leigh* sees a woman walking erratically on Broadway and calls 911. NYPD responds, but does not take further action. She says officers told her the woman refused help, wasn’t injured and not threatening others.
~January 16th: Dwight speaks with Diaz in Riverside Park near 96th Street during frigid weather; he brings her supplies and money; learns Diaz may have served in the military.
January 19th: Dwight makes two attempts to reach a homeless Veterans’ program to possibly assist Diaz. No one returns his calls. [Neither he nor WSR could verify Diaz’s purported military service.]
January 24th: Diaz dies after being run over at 93rd St. and Amsterdam Avenue.
**
We will never know what thoughts haunted Beatriz Diaz.
Was her propensity for lying in the roadway a strategy to call attention to her plight or to end it?
Those who called 911 wanted her to receive treatment. Some said they believed a person who behaved this way surely met one of New York State’s Mental Hygiene Law standards for admission.
Here’s what’s needed for an “Emergency” admission:
[Qualified hospital directors] may receive and retain therein as a patient for a period of fifteen days any person alleged to have a mental illness for which immediate observation, care, and treatment in a hospital is appropriate and which is likely to result in serious harm to himself or others. “Likelihood to result in serious harm” as used in this article shall mean:
- substantial risk of physical harm to himself as manifested by threats of or attempts at suicide or serious bodily harm or other conduct demonstrating that he is dangerous to himself, or
- a substantial risk of physical harm to other persons as manifested by homicidal or other violent behavior by which others are placed in reasonable fear of serious physical harm.
“Emergency” admissions can convert into an “Involuntary” admission of up to 60 days, under other provisions of New York law. But just because something can happen, doesn’t mean it does, or should.
“The dirty little secret is nobody in the medical community wants to do an involuntary commitment. You don’t want to force medications and treatment on people,” says Robert, the man who called 911 in early December to report Diaz lying in the street. Robert is a medical researcher who works in a Bronx emergency room and says he has observed many repeat visitors exhibiting severe psychiatric symptoms. “If you sign someone in, it’s on your [record]. People can sue the hospital for civil rights violations.”
WSR asked Keri Goldwyn, program director for Goddard Riverside’s Uptown Homeless Outreach teams serving the Upper East and Upper West Sides, about her organization’s protocol in these situations. Due to Goddard’s client confidentiality policies, we did not discuss Beatriz Diaz or any possible interactions they may have had with her.
Generally speaking, Goldwyn says, if a Goddard client shows signs of suicidal ideation, and a supervisor’s assessment determines they are a threat to themselves, her team calls 911 and gets them to a hospital. Goddard staff often accompany the client and advocate for admission.
In practice, however, the patient’s actual length of stay often falls far short of optimal. “If you’re lucky, they’re there for 24 hours,” says Goldwyn, calling a 60-day involuntary admission “unheard of” in her experience.
Ultimately, any hospital admission is a temporary fix, she says. Homeless clients with serious mental illness first need housing options that they will accept. “The hope is that once someone is inside and has a little bit more stability, we can work on connecting them to long-term care.”
Goldwyn says Goddard sometimes partners with the NYC Health Department’s Intensive Mobile Treatment [IMT] teams to coordinate the most effective treatment plan.
With street homeless populations, it can take anywhere from one to 200 engagements with outreach workers before someone accepts services. “These are complex issues and every person is different. Patience, persistence and building trust are the name of the game,” she says. “We’ve seen some incredible stories of transformation.”
City Council Member Erik Bottcher, representing Columbus Circle and Hell’s Kitchen, has been outspoken about his own involuntary admission as a teenager, following several suicide attempts. He says the intervention “saved my life.” Bottcher has issued an 8-point plan to better direct mental health resources toward the most critically ill.
In a recent email blast, Bottcher highlighted a reason for optimism: Mayor Adams’ appointment of Dr. Ashwin Vasan, President and CEO of Fountain House, as NYC’s next Health Commissioner. Fountain House originated the “Clubhouse Model, a community-based service model that helps people with a history of serious mental illness rejoin society and maintain their place in it.
Assisted Outpatient Treatment or AOT [Kendra’s Law] in which a court mandates a person receive mental health care has also proven useful in increasing treatment compliance, experts say. But the “outpatient” nature of its programming doesn’t always work well with homeless populations. [WSR will have more about Kendra’s Law and related efforts in an upcoming post.]
Marc Greenberg, executive director of the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing, says it’s important to remember that New York state has 40,000 mental health housing units – such as group homes – that provide very intensive support. “40,000 people safely housed, that aren’t on the street, that aren’t putting themselves and others in danger. And that’s a great success,” says Greenberg. “But if there’s one failure, it’s one too many. We need to try to save everyone.”
**
According to her voter registration record, Beatriz Diaz received residential mental health care in recent years via programs affiliated with Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn. But she apparently didn’t like her most recent placement.
Over two conversations in January, Diaz told Dwight, an architect who befriended her in Riverside Park, about the facility’s shortcomings. “She didn’t like that the doors were unlocked,” recalls Dwight. ”She said someone there had stolen her laptop and she left in October.”
Diaz told him about multiple health issues, including struggles with serious mental illness. “She seemed to have a good awareness that things weren’t right,” he says. Dwight had hoped to broach the subject of medication in a future talk. One that will now never happen.
“I started to wonder if she really had the assistance, but she just wasn’t using it.” He paused. “It’s a life. It’s tragic.”
What a sad, sad story. I’m sorry Beatriz could’t get the help she needed. It was heartening to read that so many tried. But … And there are so many others needing help. I also really feel for the guy who ran over her. That’s a heavy cross to bear even tho he probably never saw her. Again, a sad, sad story.
I so much agree with you, It’s just heartbreaking for her, those who tried to help her and the driver
Great reporting, WSR. Thanks!
This is very sad. She clearly had major problems and could not make rational decisions for herself. At some point, it should be determined that she can’t make these decisions. The bar should be fairly high for this, but she was clearly over the bar.
The problem are those mentioned in the article who sue for civil rights violations and thus prevent the system from working. These people should mind their own business – they are making it impossible for people to get the treatment they need.
Meanwhile, there is another victim. The poor driver is likely traumatized for life. So sad.
The people suing for civil rights violations are usually the same people who were involuntarily hospitalized. So it is their business — the only question is whether their claim is legitimate. And there, I assume it varies significantly from case to case.
More likely it’s lawyers who instigate these lawsuits and who profit the most from them. I doubt the homeless mentally ill are able to research and hire attorneys on their own. Unfortunately they are easy marks for anyone willing to use them. And sadly no one is actually helping them. And maybe there’s very little we can do.
“Was her propensity for lying in the roadway a strategy to call attention to her plight or to end it?”
This is extremely gross speculation. The woman obviously had mental health issues. People with mental health issues are not looking for attention.
I’m sorry you interpreted it that way.
What I intended was to ask whether her actions were perhaps a cry for help.
Thank you for reading and caring about this issue.
The narrative described in this reporting is very accurate.
There is no institutional will to address this inhumane treatment of the mentally ill
This tragic narrative is an example of the failure of our mental health, emergency, public health and policing systems, to address the mentally ill on the streets who are a threat to themselves and others.
For two years I have been trying to get help to ” Jose “- an apparently homeless, mentally ill man who regularly begs for money in front of the 711 at 100th and Amsterdam.
Precinct 24 know him well and have been ineffective in dealing with him.
I have had no return calls from Danny O’Donnell, or Mark Levine’s office. No return calls from Goddard Riverside. No response from the Health Department.
He is at times aggressive, knocking down the sunglass stand in front of the stationary store at 100th and Broadway, ripping out plantings in the garden on 100th street, barging in to store fronts along Broadway, sleeping on church steps for weeks at a time, hurling trash cans full of trash in to oncoming traffic along Amsterdam in the 100s, shouting and making menacing motions to no one or to anyone. He began using the NYCHA parking lot between Broadway and Amsterdam as a personal sewer, with at least twenty deposits of humans feces most of which are still evident there along the back fence of the parking spaces. No response from the Health department on this either although a complaint has been registered.
Once I was successful in having him picked up by the Department of Homeless Services Van but only because it was a Code Blue evening, and apparently they are required to take homeless off the street to prevent them from freezing to death. The many other times I asked them to intercede on his behalf, they left him on the street because he refused help.
This is another tragic death waiting to happen, because our system is broken.
I understand how those individuals who tried to help “ Beatrice” feel.
If the WSR can get any elected official’s attention to address this ongoing tragedy, God Bless them.
This is why some people need to be instutiionalized against their will.
If I did these kinds of things, I should end up in jail.
If one is mentally ill AND damaging property and/or threatening the safety of people, then that person should be put in a place where they can receive treatment while reducing the risk to others, even if they don’t want to go there.
Sometimes the rights of a fewneed to be curtailed to permit the rights and security of the many.
Thank you Joy Bergmann for this well-written and informative article.
It should be read by everyone who lives in NYC. Treating people with severe mental health illness, whatever their genesis, does not have easy solutions. We need to understand that and be more tolerant.
Thank you, Joy Bergmann, this is brilliant reporting, focusing not on the “macro” problem full of statistics and generalizations, but focusing on a single, heartbreaking case that shows how complex and tragic the whole cycle is. Think of how many times the NYPD and EMS were called to help this poor woman, and how our laws and the system left them powerless to help them. So very sad and a wake-up call I won’t soon forget.
How many resources are we supposed to waste on the unsalvageable? Police, ambulances, doctors, hospitals – all on someone who is never going to be helped. Our Victoria’s Secret bum had outlasted the store, and is still sleeping on the street in front of it.
Help should be directed to those who will most benefit from it, not to the black holes of humanity who will suck it down and emerge unchanged.
Rosen:
Cripes…
Are you serious, or was that an attempt at sarcasm, because no one could really be that heartless and cold, right?
Mental issues can strike anyone due to genetics, medical conditions, reactions to medications, physical trauma, etc. And comes in all varieties, from delusions to cold and heartless sociopathic behavior..
People are not “unsalvageable”, each day can bring them closer to a better life.
Maybe you get started?
Good luck to you
Hyman, if you were on Medicare and needed cancer treatments that would run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, why should the government focus that money on you who has a high possibility of dying rather than her who has a different disease and a lower over chance of the disease actually killing her? Why would you be more salvageable?
I believe their point was that the government should NOT focus on them. I won’t claim to know what the answers are, but I do to some degree agree with Hyman’s central point that some people are beyond reasonable help.
That’s not a comfortable reality, but I do think it IS reality unless some major changes take place. That’s the closest thing to a solution I can conceive of – change has to happen at a systemic level, and probably in multiple areas. Our systems (police, medical, legal, etc) have so many endemic issues, and people have so many intrinsic rights (which, usually, is a good thing) that it essentially cripples any efforts to treat those who don’t want to be treated – regardless whether they’re in a sound enough mental place to make such a judgement call. I know that the solution isn’t to throw neverending heaps of money at such people (black holes is a bit crude, but under the current systems it’s not so unreasonable). I also know the solution isn’t to ignore people with real problems. Sadly, as this article shows, trying to help often has very limited effects within a broken system. Those in charge, who can affect real change, need to do so at a systemic level. The rules need to change.
What a heartless response. I’m not for coddling criminals, but we are talking about mentally ill. People with mental issues who have family members with money are getting help from psychiatrists for insomnia or slightest anxiety. But people who are serious danger to themselves and others are completely ignored.
Our officials have to do something, and not chase “dark stores”
Jen, one can be mentally ill AND be a criminal.
Presence of mental illness in a person is not a justification to allow them to commit criminal acts.
“Notimpressed” has a good point and one which is not getting the focus it should. Mental illness is considered a mitigating factor for criminality and allows property destruction, assaults, and other quality of life crimes to flourish. Why can’t we change the way we prosecute these crimes? Why not have those who commit them enrolled in an educational program that teaches behavior appropriate to a civilized society, with more serious consequences for repeat offenses?
“How many resources are we supposed to waste on the unsalvageable?”
They’re called “human beings.” I would make a comment about someone named Hyman Rosen having better sense than to refer to marginalized humans with such dehumanizing language, but I expect that’s just a gross fake name for a troll.
Thank you for this compassionate reporting, Joy.
Sarah, is the answer to let human beings with mental illness live on the street and threaten the safety of themselves and others?
That certainly doesn’t sound humane.
Look beyond your personal offense at Hyman’s tone and perhaps respond to his point.
His point is that these people are garbage who deserve no further help. Look into your own heart and ask yourself why you think that’s okay, and whether you want them treated “humanely” or whether you just want them to stop inconveniencing you with their appeal to our common humanity.
But what is humane treatment for them?
I believe his point is that some people, however sick they may be, are repeatedly recalcitrant.
So what is to be done?
Do we continue, as a society, to cycle them from the street to the hospital and back to the street over and over?
Or do we, as a society, act against their wishes and put them in a facility where they can reduce their risk of harm to themselves or others?
I believe that is the best tactic.
That is what is in my heart.
What is in yours?
I believe this is the same person i called 911 on in early January. She was sitting in the street wearing all black on 87th street and West End Ave. A few people came to check on her and she was screaming at them. The ambulance never came and I was in a rush so couldn’t stick around much longer. Feel very sorry for her.
Well-researched article, zeroing in on the problems facing those who need help, and the neighbors who want to help but don’t have resources available that work. Interesting that there are 40,000 housing units available. I wonder how many mentally ill people are still on the streets, and what organizations are trying to help them? Perhaps in the article to come.
Did the driver stop and call for help? If not, who reported the incident?
Yes, pls see earlier WSR coverage of this incident
I do not work in a hospital but I work with people with mental illness, and so I witness things from the other side. Generally, for someone to be involuntarily hospitalized – and often, just hospitalized more than a day – tue person must ve an OMMEDIATE danger to themselves or someone else. If the person states ” I am not thinking of killing myself,” then generally, the person will be released. And people lie.
This is tragic.
Excellent reporting. Why can’t the involuntary commitment process consider the sheer number of repeat incidents in determining whether to hold someone for more than 24 hours, instead of just the “immediate danger” factor? Repeating dangerous behavior over and over seems like a really useful metric to identify who is likely to harm themselves.
More importantly, for interventions to work, we cannot punish those who are trying to do the right thing by getting these people help. Whatever laws allow us to persecute medical professionals who are genuinely trying to help need to be struck down.
There are people we have chosen to abandon. For along time we abandoned them into tomb-like mental institutions. We called them “hospitals” to assuage our guilt. We used them to varied initiatves, not always including illness.
The tomb-like institutions have dwindled in number, but stil knowing not what to do with the most seriously ill, we relegate them to the streets or jails.
Harold A Maio
I’m one of the people that tried to help this woman. She was cognitive enough to get up and run away. When I was having a conversation with 911, she got up and ran away screaming.
She was screaming and ranting incoherently while lying in the middle of the street then got up. How do you help adults who refuse help? Locking them up in psychiatric hospitals against their will when they are only a danger to themselves is not the answer.
Please read Joy’s Insightful investigative article about the mental health laws in NY and the situation with this woman.
Rwc, I don’t believe this person was only a danger to herself.
Repeatedly lying down in front of traffic presents a clear and immediate danger to drivers.
In addition, a driver might have swerved to miss her and hit a pedestrian or a bicycle.
If we don’t remove these people from danger against their will, then what do we do?
Involuntary commitment is the flip side of looking the other way. We used to send people like this to hellholes where they were treated like animals by abusive and sometimes sadistic “staff,” until a public outcry led to the current policy of “benign” neglect.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titicut_Follies
For a real understanding of how we got to the present tragic state of affairs, I recommend ” Bedlam”-An Intimate Journey into America’s Mental Health Crisis by by Kenneth Paul Rosenberg.
It is beautifully explained.
But there is no solution set forth.
If you want to understand the problem from the theory to the reality then I suggest this PBS Frontline “Right To Fail”
https://youtu.be/7B-okvAO1tM
or read any of the excellent articles on Larry Hogue, the wildman of 96th street.
Excellent reporting, WSR. Thank you for covering this story with such detail and sensitivity to the multi-pronged challenges of this issue. Rest in peace, Beatriz.
So sad that all the efforts of our locals did not prevent this horrible accident. Beatrice was a danger to herself and others. She should have been in a care facility. I can only imagine how traumatizing it must be to run over a human being. This could have been prevented. Horrible.
When laws changed about involuntary commitment, decades ago, it was intended to protect peoples’ rights, protect their dignity and admittedly, to empty state mental hospitals and absolve the states & fed from having to pay for room & board, medications and psychiatric staff to care for them.
But it’s a double edge sword. They emptied the hospitals of people who are truly psychotic, along with the drug & alcohol addicted and those who couldn’t cope with their neuroses. They threw out the baby & the bath, so-to-speak. For years people lived in Central Park, and elsewhere on the streets mostly quietly. Now there are thousands on the streets. They don’t want homeless shelters where crime is rampant. And there is no place for them, no help for them, no therapy for them, no medication for them and no one cares. It was always just a matter of time till they hurt others, till they hurt themselves – and nothing will be done til they hurt property values.
What do they do with the mentally ill homeless in China? China is a country that is not obsessed with people’s rights as we are. They can therefore deal with the problem in a more practical manner.
Surely your question can not be an actual one?
Seems to me that what Dwight was doing is exactly what needed to be done, supportive talk sessions, but earlier and by a social worker who could offer tangible forms of assistance. We need a corp of roving social workers who find and establish relationships with troubled people on the streets and resolve problems one at a time. If they need a plainclothes office with them for safety, then so be it.
Important piece and well done
Great article! Very informative.
Some homeless people refuse aid. A homeless lady in the park who is around sixty even refused to provide her name when I offered to help her apply for the federal covid grants for which the was entitled. She could have collected two to three thousand dollars.
She also refuses to go to shelters during extremely weather conditions.
I keep in touch with her and provide small assistances.
Very well written piece. Thank you!
I’ve read every article in WSR for years; this is among the few that made me cry. It is utterly heartbreaking. I’m moved not only by the tragic and preventable loss of life, but by the “kindness of strangers” (to echo Tennessee Williams) who tried valiantly to help.
My friend left NYC for Vienna. It is illegal there to loiter and definitely illegal to sleep on street/erect a tent, etc. Violators are quickly arrested and placed in a nice facilities out in the country where there is good mental health help and/or vocational training with the condition to leave that they have progressed successfully through the program. It’s more humane than our system…
Thank you so much for writing this piece. 93rd Street is my block and I witnessed the aftermath of this terrible death. Thank you for giving her this piece. For giving her a name. For allowing us all to remember that the homeless are still people. It’s a heartbreaking situation. And as we all know is in an extremely dire place right now xo
I was so upset to learn about this death, on the same day as another pedestrian was killed in a crosswalk by a driver. Thank you for this article, which gives more context to the circumstances of the tragedy. I still think there’s no reason for drivers to be going so fast that they can’t stop for pedestrians under any circumstances. I’m heartened that so many tried to help Diaz and hope we can do better to make streets safer for all community members.
Joy – thoughtful article by a empathetic journalist – this was a human being whose life deserved recognition.
Well-researched and written article.
Articles like this are import to maintaining our humanity.
Thank you to the West Side Rag and Joy Bergmann.