County Can’t Lock Its Mental Hospital : Security: Officials say more staff will be added to keep patients from leaving. But the facility’s design makes it impossible to assure that no one will wander away.

Despite calls from neighbors and police to upgrade security at the county mental hospital, officials said Wednesday that they can do little to keep patients from wandering away from the facility.

Randall Feltman, the county’s director of mental health, said the hospital for 28 mentally ill patients has a dozen outside doors and windows that cannot be locked, chained shut or boarded up under county fire codes and hospital guidelines. It was not designed to be a locked facility, he said.

And while hospital officials plan to add more staff to keep an eye on the patients, it will be impossible to keep patients from leaving, he said.

“We are going to redouble our efforts and add staff,” Feltman said. “But there is no guarantee of 100% that no one is going to walk away.”

A man who broke out of restraints at the Ventura County Medical Center, located next to the mental hospital, is suspected in the slaying of a 90-year-old woman in her nearby home.

Since Velasta Johnson was stabbed to death, neighbors in the area have complained that numerous patients from the mental facility have turned up in the neighborhood over the years.

And although the suspect, Kevin Kolodziej, 25, walked away from the medical center and not the county mental hospital, nearby residents and police want the mental hospital to upgrade security to keep patients from wandering away.

Police say they are called “a dozen or more times a week” to round up escapees.

Feltman said the county is designing a new facility for the mentally ill that will be more secure. He said the hospital is scheduled to be completed in August, 1993, but county officials are trying to move up the completion date in the wake of the neighborhood outcry.

Several residents in the 200 block of Agnus Drive said they cannot wait until 1993 for the problem to end.

“We see these poor souls walking around,” said Cheryl Baptista, a resident of Agnus Drive. “They’ve got to increase security.”

She said most of the residents on the street plan to attend a neighborhood meeting Saturday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church to discuss the issue.

“The hospital has got to do something,” said another resident, who asked not to be identified. “They just can’t let these people roam. It will just get worse and worse.”

Feltman said he hopes to reassure neighbors Saturday that most patients in the mental hospital are not dangerous. Those who could pose a threat, Feltman said, are placed in one of four locked rooms or transferred to another facility with greater security.

“I do want the residents to know that they are safe, and we will be vigilant,” he said.

Although neighborhood residents are frightened and angry about Johnson’s death, it is not fair to place the blame on all mentally ill people, Feltman said.

“Just locking them up is not the answer,” Feltman said. “They have rights.”

Medical officials also defended their actions in dealing with Kolodziej, saying they did everything they could to sedate and restrain the man, but could not legally keep him against his will at the medical center.

Phillipp Wessels, director of the county’s health care agency, which oversees both the medical center and the mental hospital, said officials were drawing up a special order to place Kolodziej under emergency psychiatric observation for 72 hours without his authorization. But under the law, he said, they could not issue the decree until Kolodziej was well enough to be released from the medical center.

He said Kolodziej had become combative and hit two nurses while he was undergoing care for four or five stab wounds, which doctors believed were self-inflicted. During the two weeks the man was at the medical center, he was evaluated by a psychiatrist at least three times, Wessels said. He declined to discuss the conclusions from the evaluations.

Feltman said Kolodziej most likely would have been transported to the county mental hospital for observation after he was released from the medical center.

Wessels said he would like to see a task force formed to increase the cooperation between medical officials, the police and neighbors to keep incidents similar to Johnson’s slaying from happening in the future.

He said he was sorry about Johnson’s death.

“There is nothing I can say that will change that and nothing I can say that will make (the family) feel any differently about what happened here,” Wessels said. “All of us here feel their sorrow.”

Kolodziej remains in Ventura County Jail with bail set at $250,000. He is scheduled to be arraigned at 1:30 p.m. today in Ventura County Municipal Court.

The funeral for Velasta Johnson is scheduled for 9 a.m. today at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Ventura.