Missing Patient

The quiet of the hospital was broken by the piercing sirens, and white-clad guards ran everywhere looking for the missing mental patient to no avail.

Later that evening, the police, responding to a report of a woman screaming, surrounded a house. As they pulled up, they could see activity through a gap in the curtains, and the lights abruptly went out.

Repeated knocking and ringing of the bell being unavailing, they broke down the door. To their horror, they saw a woman lying naked on the floor and the mental patient just pulling up his pants. The mental patient ran to a large bedroom window, picked up a stool, broke it out, and tried to make his escape into the fields behind the house.

One of the officers, not quick enough to catch him, fired at the fleeing form, hitting him in the arm. The impact and surprise threw the fleeing felon off balance, and he crashed into the low fence surrounding the back yard.

The man was treated at the local hospital, and sent back to the institution, where he was placed under guard in solitary confinement

The headline in the local paper the next day read: