NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Kristen Dunlap's 25-year-old son suffered a mental health crisis, but after calling for help, he got lost in the system.
Dunlap did not see her son for days and even filed a missing persons report with the Metro Nashville Police Department. When she finally found him, he was on life support in a Nashville hospital.
Darian McKissack had a full-time job with no criminal record, but he was tazed, arrested, maced in jail — then given medication that nearly killed him in hospital.
"This was the first time I saw him," Dunlap said as she looked at a picture of her son in the Intensive Care Unit at Nashville General Hospital. "My first glimpse of my son, he has tubes down his throat. He's out of it. He has bruises all over him. He didn't look like himself."
Dunlap said her son had not had a mental health issue in years, but four days earlier, his girlfriend called and said McKissack was acting oddly and breaking things in their apartment.
She told his girlfriend to call Mobile Crisis, a 24-hour statewide phone line for people experiencing mental health problems.
"She was frantic and she said my son was having an episode and she didn't know what to do," Dunlap said.
The Mobile Crisis operator became concerned about the girlfriend's safety and called 911 to ask for a wellness check.
"I have the caller on the other line. We're wanting a mental health wellness check with a mental health response if possible," the Crisis operator told the 911 operator.
As they waited for help, the 15-minute phone call became more and more tense.
"Do you feel like you are in a safe place right now?" asked the 911 operator.
"No. I need someone here now," the girlfriend said.
Police officers responded, concerned about a potentially dangerous domestic situation.
"He didn't know what was going on. He was out of his mind. And that was again the reason we called Mobile Crisis not Metro," Dunlap said.
When police arrived they said McKissack came at them in an "aggressive manner" and "pushed" an officer.
He was tazed and handcuffed then charged with resisting arrest and assault.
"He went downtown and we kind of lost touch with him," Dunlap said.
Dunlap quickly paid his bond. She said that evening the sheriff's office said her son had already been released and had walked out of the jail.
"They told us he was released and we were like OK, if he were released, where did he go? Which way did he go because he would be walking," Dunlap said.
He had no cell phone and no money. The family frantically searched the streets and bridges of Nashville fearing the worst.
"I didn't know what to do. I was crazy really because I knew he was not in his right mind," Dunlap said.
The next day Dunlap filed a missing preson's report with Metro police stating she'd been told her son was "released." But it turns out McKissack was never released.
Incident reports show he was a "disruptive inmate" who was "exposed to a chemical agent" after "refusing to be cuffed."
Licensed therapist Suzzane Blackwood did not treat McKissack, but said systems in place have to do more to keep people in mental health crisis out of the criminal justice system.
"Sadly this happens way too often," Blackwood said. "It really hurts their trust in the system. Tragically some will not ask for help again because their trust has been violated."
Records show McKissack was sent to Nashville General Hospital on a mental health hold, but his mom was not told because he is an adult. When Dunlap arrived at the hospital, she said she was told she could not see him because of medical privacy laws.
"That was too much for me, because I still have not laid eyes on my child," Dunlap said with tears streaming down her face.
She finally saw him the next day, but only after attempts to treat McKissack went horribly wrong.
"They gave him medication that threw him into some type of allergy, which caused him to be put on life support," Dunlap said.
McKissack recovered, but now months later, his mom has a stack of medical bills.
"It is about $200,000. We have medical bills we have to pay for," Dunlap said.
His mom said the family reached out for help only to have the system make things worse.
"It needs to be fixed somehow, someway because it should never have happened," Dunlap said.
The sheriff's office said they don't know why someone said that McKissack had been released to the streets. Obviously, that was not true.
The criminal charges against McKissack have been dropped.
But now the family questions whether they will ever trust the system enough to call for help in the future.
