It would be several minutes before anyone came out to talk with Hardy. And when they did, staff members struggled to provide basic descriptions of the teens and offered no specifics as to why they were being housed at Palmetto Summerville Behavioral Health...
Hardy was called to the Midland Parkway center about 6:30 p.m. to check out a report of four young men running away from the facility. Once he got there, he had to wait 12 minutes before anyone came out to meet him.
When he finally met with a staff member, she provided "very vague" information. Staff could not provide a specific location where the four scaled the center's 6-foot wooden fence or a solid time frame for the incident. Hardy was told they ran off while en route to the gym.
Staff also had difficulty providing clothing descriptions for three of the missing youths and had to call over to the nursing station to get height and weight measurements for the teens. Staff did not tell Hardy the teens posed a threat to the community.
At one point, he specifically asked why they had been sent to the center from Washington. "Are they criminal or mental?"
"A little of both," a staff member replied. "They're juveniles sent here because of psychiatric issues and they may have come here because they committed a crime."
The only mention of violence came when a staff member told Hardy one youth had attacked a center worker, police said....