Skilling Is Taken to Hospital, Police Say

Indicted former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Jeffrey K. Skilling was taken to a New York hospital early Friday after police responded to complaints that he was accusing patrons at a bar of being FBI agents and was pulling on their clothes, police said.

New York police picked up Skilling after finding him at 4 a.m. at Park Avenue and East 73rd Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, after receiving calls about an emotionally disturbed person, said Det. Thomas Kuchma.

“He was acting erratically, taken into custody and then removed to a New York hospital for evaluation because of his erratic behavior,” said Kuchma, who would not give more details.

Emergency medical personnel who were present when Skilling was picked up reported that he was highly uncooperative, police sources told Reuters.

“EMS determined that he was intoxicated, irrational and possibly suffering from paranoid delusions, due to the fact that he was pulling open people’s clothes and looking for recording devices, accusing them of being FBI agents and stalking him,” a source said.

Skilling had visited several bars, where he allegedly went up to patrons and pulled open their clothes while shouting accusations that they were FBI agents, according to Associated Press, which first reported the story.

Skilling, who was with his wife at the time, did the same thing to people on the street, the Associated Press report said.

Police did not press charges against Skilling. New York Presbyterian Hospital, where police sources said Skilling was sent for observation, said they had no information on him.

Skilling’s lawyer disputed the police reports.

“Mr. Skilling and his wife were in New York attending a concert for one of his children. They were physically accosted, and his wife was thrown to the ground, and she suffered a mild concussion and had to go to the hospital,” Daniel Petrocelli, Skilling’s lead counsel, told Reuters.

“He’s under indictment for crimes he didn’t commit and is fighting for his life and in a very difficult situation,” he said.

Skilling, 50, was indicted Feb. 19 in Houston on fraud, conspiracy and insider-trading charges stemming from the accounting fraud that drove Enron into bankruptcy and cost investors $68 billion in market value. He has pleaded not guilty.

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Bloomberg News was used in compiling this report.