Release by VA of AIDS Patient Irritates Police

A man with AIDS who was hospitalized last week after police said he had threatened to infect others with the deadly disease has been released by the Veterans Adminstration Hospital in Sepulveda, police said Tuesday.

Los Angeles police complained that they learned of Barry Joseph Debow’s release only after the fact and that they believe Debow still might pose a danger.

Debow, 28, who gave authorities addresses in the San Fernando Valley and Oxnard, was ordered hospitalized for mental evaluation Friday, two days after walking out of the VA hospital “without authorization,” police said.

In earlier conversations with VA doctors, Debow had made threats against his former employers at Rancho Encino Hospital in Encino and had threatened to pass the deadly AIDS virus to anyone who interfered with him, Detective Bill Pavelic said.

“Based on the information that we had . . . I would definitely consider him a danger to self and to others,” Pavelic said.

But Pavelic noted that Debow has “obviously been evaluated by mental health professionals and they felt that he was OK.”

Debow has been despondent about contracting AIDS, losing his job as a hospital cook and being denied unemployment benefits, the detective said.

Debow was apprehended Friday by Oxnard police, who took him to the VA hospital for confinement under a state law giving authorities the power to hold for 72 hours persons who might pose a danger to themselves or others.

The 72-hour period expired on Monday, Pavelic said, and VA officials told police Tuesday that Debow had been released then.

A nursing supervisor at the hospital would not comment Tuesday, and efforts to reach a hospital spokesman were unsuccessful.

Police are seeking to arrest Debow on a misdemeanor warrant alleging that he possessed marijuana, Pavelic said. But detectives did not want to arrest him in the hospital because they did not want to interfere with his care, Pavelic said.

When Debow is found, police will evaluate his behavior then and decide whether to again confine him under the state mental health statutes, the detective said.

“They were well aware that we had a warrant,” Pavelic said of VA officials, “and to go ahead and release him without notifying us, I thought was a little uncalled for.”