Disabled Youth Missing Since Jail Freed Him : Law enforcement: The 19-year-old’s mother was not notified of his release late Friday night. Sheriff’s officials defend action.

The parents of a 19-year-old mentally retarded youth searched the city of Ventura and its outskirts Tuesday for their missing son, who was arrested last week and then released from Ventura County Jail without their knowledge.

Eric Schimmel, whose mental capacity has been compared to that of a 5-year-old, was arrested last Wednesday in the remote mountain community of Frazier Park after climbing into a neighbor’s van described by his parents as being filled with toy trucks and play balls.

Although the owner of the van was on vacation, Ventura County sheriff’s deputies assigned to patrol the sparsely populated area on the Ventura-Kern county border responded to a prowler call from a neighbor and arrested the youth.

Schimmel’s mother, Linda Smith, said the deputies told her that they intended to take him into custody on suspicion of vehicle tampering, loitering and petty theft.

She said she did not object at the time because she was mad at her son for not heeding her oft-repeated instructions to stay off the neighbor’s property. But, she added, she thought her son was only going to be held overnight in a juvenile facility.

“Things don’t stay with him when you tell him something,” she said, adding that she now regrets her first reaction to her son’s arrest. “I thought he might think twice about doing something like this again.”

As she searched for her son Tuesday, Linda Smith said she was particularly worried about the teen-ager because, she said, he does not know how to use a telephone and is too shy to ask for help.

“He won’t ask for help,” his mother said. “He has a sweet, gentle personality. But he’s real shy and can’t talk to people.”

Linda Smith faulted jail officials for the way they handled her son’s arrest--from confining him in the main adult jail in Ventura despite his family’s protest, to later releasing him late Friday night without notification.

“They’ve turned my boy into a homeless child,” she said. “My whole life, I’ve had to fight to get him help and to get people to recognize he has a problem.”

Smith, her 14-year-old son, Jayson Schimmel, her sister, Barbara Reid and lawyer David Sanders have spent the last two days periodically checking the area around the jail, the Ventura County Fairgrounds and even the homeless encampments in the Ventura River bottom known as Hobo Jungle.

They began distributing flyers with the youth’s photograph and a description of the clothes he was wearing before his arrest--a blue T-shirt, gray jeans and white tennis sneakers.

Diagnostic testing done when Schimmel was 16 found that his intelligence level ranged from that of a 3-year-old in problem-solving and memory of spoken words to an 11-year-old in expressive vocabulary, according to Sanders, who the Smiths hired to assist in the search and defend Schimmel in court.

Schimmel’s overall mental capacity is judged to be that of a 5-year-old, Sanders said.

“My worst fear is not finding him. I don’t feel very hopeful right now,” Schimmel’s mother said late Tuesday. She gave this account of the events leading up to the disappearance of her son:

After arresting him in Frazier Park, deputies took Schimmel to the main adult jail in Ventura. On Thursday, relatives discovered his whereabouts and called the jail in protest but were told that he was fine and would be kept in the jail until his arraignment Friday.

On Friday afternoon, Linda Smith and her husband, Jeff Smith, showed up in court for the scheduled arraignment, thinking that they could clear up what they considered to be a misunderstanding and take their son home.

Instead, they said, they were told that the arraignment was being delayed and that Schimmel was going to be rearrested. The Smiths said they went home to Frazier Park thinking that Schimmel was going to spend the weekend in jail in lieu of bail that had been increased from $10,000 to $20,000, an amount they said they could not afford.

The Smiths said they were told that Schimmel would remain in custody until a new arraignment scheduled for Tuesday. However, on Sunday, when asking the jail about her nephew, an aunt discovered he had been released two days earlier.

Jail officials confirmed Tuesday that Schimmel was released on his own recognizance at 11:56 p.m. Friday with 13 other inmates but denied charges by the Smiths that they had mishandled Schimmel’s arrest or acted improperly when they released him without notice.

Assistant Ventura County Sheriff Richard Bryce said Tuesday that his jail officials made no mistakes in placing Schimmel in with more serious criminals in the adult jail or in not contacting his family upon his release.

“They interviewed him and he was functioning quite well,” said Bryce, who has administrative authority over the jail. “He indicated he was not afraid to be in there and that he wasn’t being preyed upon by other inmates.”

Bryce said the jail officials acted within policy by releasing Schimmel without contacting his parents. He said his department does not notify relatives of mentally handicapped inmates of their release, even if they request such notification.

Only if an inmate was severely dysfunctional, Bryce said, would he or she be segregated and referred to the county mental health unit for assessment before being freed.

“They can diagnose him any way they want. The fact is that he was in the general population for that time without incident and that speaks for itself,” Bryce said.

The sheriff’s office, nonetheless, issued an all-points bulletin for Schimmel on Tuesday after contacting the 13 other inmates released with him and discovering none knew his whereabouts, Bryce said.

In addition to the Smiths, some mental health advocates in the county criticized the Sheriff’s Department, saying its handling of Schimmel illustrates the way police agencies often deal with the mentally disabled.

“It does sound like this guy has fallen through the cracks. Hopefully he won’t get hurt,” said Fred Robinson, executive director of the Assn. for Retarded Citizens, Ventura County. “We lost a client a few years ago who wandered away from home and was never found. These people are very vulnerable. They are not street-wise.”

Joseph Rhine, a senior attorney for Protection and Advocacy Inc., a federally funded legal assistance and investigatory agency in Los Angeles, said he plans to investigate the incident to determine whether the jail mistreated a mentally retarded inmate.

“Unless they are segregated in the jail, they are easy prey,” Rhine said. “As for his release, it’s one thing if he lived five blocks from the jail, but they released him nearly 80 miles from his home late on a Friday night.”

If Schimmel is found, officials still intend to prosecute him. He is scheduled to appear Friday for arraignment on the three charges, which carry maximum sentences of six months to a year in jail, Deputy Dist. Atty. Brenda Andrade said.