Mental Patient Accused of Kendra’s Death Rejected By Queens Group Home

by HOWARD GIRSKY If a Queens group home could have accommodated accused slayer Andrew Goldstein then Kendra Webdale’s life might have been spared.
Joseph A. Rogers, executive director of the National Mental Health Consumers Self-Help Clearinghouse, said that Goldstein, whose mother lives in Little Neck, was turned down because of inadequate state funding of group homes.
"The tragedy of Andrew Goldstein and Kendra Webdale is compounded by the fact that Goldstein could have lived in a group home in the community for a fraction of the amount that New York State spent on his repeated short stays in the hospital," he said.
Rogers said Goldstein had done well in such a place and he had taken his medication. He wanted to go back there, but there was no room.
As a result, Goldstein abstained from taking his medication and allegedly pushed the young woman into the path of an oncoming subway train, killing the 32-year-old Webdale. She had been a reporter on a Queens weekly.
Last week Judge Carol Berkman declared a mistrial after jurors were hopelessly deadlocked, hurling accusations against each other in the jury room. The Manhattan District Attorney is planning to present the case again early next year.
Kendra’s mother, Patricia Webdale, said she was struggling with the trial’s jarring conclusion.
"It’s funny now that I’m back home and away from
it all, the sadness is setting in," she said. " I’m just in shock. I feel like I did when Kendra died."
The agencies which provide services to the state’s mentally ill are sharply critical of Kendra’s Law.
Harvey Rosenthal, executive director of the rehabilitation services group, charged that Kendra’s Law, proposed by Pataki, "makes a victim of the mentally ill."
He said that the Law gives the state’s judges the right to impose treatment regimes that are invasive.
"It’s shocking that a judge can intrude in the lives of the mentally ill," Rosenthal said.
He predicted that class action suits will be brought soon against the Law.
"As far as Andrew Goldstein is concerned," he said, "it was tragic because he had been responding to care offered by group homes, but was denied admission because of a funding shortfall.
Rogers agreed. "It is unfortunate that Pataki, who had cut New York’s budget for community-based mental health services, has signed Kendra’s Law, which will further drain resources that could have been put to better use in the new and innovative mental health initiatives that he is said to be planning."
Rogers is no stranger to the problems of the mentally ill. He told The Queens Courier that he was a patient in a Florida state hospital at age 19 and was told he would never be capable of holding a job. He spent several years in and out of hospitals, including nine months homeless on the streets of New York City before starting to pull his life together.