Joel Reuter, holding a phone in one hand and a pistol in the other, on July 5th, 2013 — the day he was shot by police (Images: CHS)
Story by Jeffrey Jackson
Owatonna People’s Press — Special to CHS
Doug and Nancy Reuter want to make certain their son didn’t die in vain.
And so, the former Owatonna legislator and his wife are embarking on a crusade to change the way in which mentally ill individuals, like their son, receive treatment.
“If we can change the law and save one life, it would be worth it,” said Doug Reuter, who represented Steele and Waseca counties in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 1997 to 2001.
Joel, the Reuters’ son, died on July 5, following an eight-hour standoff with Seattle police. After the 28-year-old man, who had been struggling with mental illness since he was a sophomore in college, reportedly shot through his apartment window at police, two SWAT members opened fire on him, shooting him and killing him.
A memorial service was held in Minnesota on Saturday for Joel Reuter.
But his parents do not point an accusing finger at Seattle police. Just the opposite.
“We have a good relationship with the Seattle police,” Doug Reuter said Wednesday. “We don’t blame the Seattle Police Department at all. They did what they had to do.”
They do, however, blame the mental health community in Washington state and the way it treated — or failed to treat — their son, even though, the Reuters say, those in the mental health community knew their son’s history of struggles.
“The standard line was, ‘He does not meet the criteria to hospitalize him,’” Doug Reuter said.
And when Doug Reuter asked what it would take to get his son the help that he needed, what would meet the criteria, he said one mental health worker told him, “When he has a loaded gun in his hand with his finger on the trigger,” then he would meet the criteria.
Which is exactly what happened, though instead of it leading to Joel Reuter’s being hospitalized, it lead to his being shot and killed.
Fighting zombies
The Reuters found out about the fate of their son on Twitter.
“The police themselves were tweeting,” said Doug Reuter about that morning.
Nancy Reuter still remembers the tweets:
“Shots fired at Belleve Avenue E incident,” read one, “suspect down inside apartment. Medics in route.”
It would be more than an hour later before the next tweet.
“Officer involved shooting is confirmed fatality. No officers injured. Media briefing shortly,” it said.
With that, they knew their son was dead.
But the incident began hours earlier — shortly before 3 a.m. on July 5 — when, according to the initial report by the Seattle police, neighbors reported hearing five gunshots from Joel Reuter’s apartment. One caller to police said he had seen an armed man inside the building’s elevator.
Police knew Joel Reuter from previous contact they had had with him and with contact that Reuter had had with the department’s Crisis Intervention Team, a group that works with people suffering “mental health crises.”
When they arrived at the apartment, police could hear what they say sounded like a gun maintenance training video and the sounds of someone “racking and dry-firing a gun,” the report says. But when they tried to contact Joel Reuter through the door, “he turned the volume on his television up, drowning out officers’ voices and making it difficult to communicate,” the report says.
The next sound they reported hearing from the apartment was that of Joel Reuter barricading the door with furniture. At that point, both SWAT and the Crisis Intervention Team were called in.
“Over the next seven and a half hours, police intermittently made contact with the armed man, who, at one point, came out on his apartment balcony with a handgun and an extended magazine,” the report reads. “During the incident, the man repeatedly told officers he was prepared to defend himself against ‘zombies’ and refused numerous requests by police and negotiators to surrender his gun to officers.”
Shortly before 10:30 a.m. Seattle time — 12:30 p.m. in Minnesota — Joel Reuter opened fire through the window. It was then that he was shot, though police believe that he didn’t die immediately. Negotiators in the building could still hear Reuter in the apartment. And because he had made threats to booby-trap his apartment, they did not enter immediately.
About a half-hour later, police entered the apartment and found Reuter. Though medics were called, Reuter died.
Though he admits he will never know what was going on in his son’s head on that day, Doug Reuter believes that his son was experiencing extreme paranoia that day — so much so that Joel Reuter may not have known what was going on.
“I don’t believe he knew he was shooting at police,” Doug Reuter said. “He thought he was defending himself against zombies.”
The trip from hell
The first time that the Reuters saw any sign that their son was mentally ill came in his sophomore year of college at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
“He was holed up in his room, not going to classes,” said Nancy Reuter. “He was email and messaging us things, crazy things that went from bad to worse. Delusional things.”
In one case, he accused his parents of trying to kill him through electroshock therapy. But he had never had electroshock therapy.
“It was paranoid, delusional stuff,” Nancy Reuter said.
But when they tried to intervene, they ran into roadblocks, including with the university itself, which would not allow them into Joel Reuter’s dorm to get him or even to see him.
It took six months before they learned about Arizona’s civil commitment process and were able to get him into treatment. The commitment papers were served to Joel Reuter and he was taken in for a 72-hour hold on May 9, 2004 — his 19th birthday.
After the 72-hour hold, a hearing took place to determine what, if any, further treatment he needed. The Reuters, who had retired from Owatonna to Texas, flew to Arizona for the hearing. Both of them testified.
The judge found Joel Reuter in need of treatment and ordered his commitment.
Under Arizona law, the treatment would last for a year and was a combination of in-patient and out-patient care. He remained hospitalized until he was stable, then he was released.
However, the release was conditional, meaning that he had to report to a mental health clinic every week, where he would be given a time-released injection of his medicine. If he missed an appointment, the Tucson police would be called and he would face more hospitalization.
“He was compliant,” Doug Reuter said. “For a whole year, he took his medicine and he was absolutely normal.”
And in fact, his parents said, Joel Reuter stayed on his meds for two years before he, for whatever reason, went off his pills and ended up back in the hospital for seven weeks.
“Most people with mental illness, it takes two or three hospitalizations before it clicks, ‘No matter how I feel, I do have to take this medication,’” Doug Reuter said.
After the second time, it seemed to click for Joel Reuter. And the former Owatonna student — he attended school here through his freshman year in high school — graduated from college in December 2007 with a computer science degree and got a job a month later in the computer industry in Seattle, eventually becoming a software engineer for Omni Group, a software development company.
It was, his parents say, his dream job.
In an Internet blog entry, Joel Reuter, who went by the nickname Joeliolio, wrote about his job:
“I work in one of the coolest places ever. We have pinball games, a gigantic theater and a kitchen which serves meals three times a day. We work hard and we laugh hard and we get a lot done. … I love my job.”
But in the same blog, posted earlier this year, Joel Reuter wrote about a new battle he faced — cancer. That month, he was diagnosed with lymphoma. His parents were on vacation in Hawaii when he called them to break the news.
Still, even then, he was optimistic. In the same blog entry, he wrote:
“I’m on chemotherapy and I’m doing well so far. I’m told that I have a great shot at getting it cured over the course of several months of chemo treatments and maybe a little radiation at the end … What I want to find, and I think I will, is a stronger self as someone who has defeated cancer. I want to talk proudly down the street knowing that I have beaten this thing that could have killed me had I not been so strong. I am so lucky.”
By the tone of the blog, Nancy Reuter said, it is clear to her that her son was still on his meds. But by mid-February, shortly after a chemotherapy treatment, the Reuters began to receive messages from Joel’s friends that he was changing.
“For sure we knew in March that he was off his meds,” Doug Reuter said.
The Reuters were going to meet their son for dinner in Seattle on March 13. But when they met up with him, they knew that he was in a full-blown bipolar episode.
“He was manic,” Nancy Reuter said.
“It started the downhill slide,” Doug Reuter added.
“It was the trip from hell,” Nancy Reuter concluded.
Over the next two days, Joel Reuter withdrew $28,000 out of his bank account and, without warning, flew to London, even after his friends tried to intervene and get him to a hospital. All the time, he was posting his whereabouts on Facebook.
The Facebook postings allowed his parents to follow him and get word out about him. Agents at Heathrow intercepted him, held him and deported him back to Seattle. He was met at the Seattle airport by airport police, customs agents and mental health crisis workers, all of whom interviewed him for what his parents say was three hours.
Their conclusion? He did not meet the criteria for hospitalization, and he was released.
“You don’t know who’s crazier,” Nancy Reuter said.
What followed was a trip to Canada, where he was hospitalized for two weeks following a suicide attempt. In mid-April, he was hospitalized again, this time in Everett, Wash., and again for two weeks. Finally, in June, he was hospitalized one last time — three and a half weeks in Seattle.
If only he would have remained hospitalized, his parents say, Joel Reuter might still be alive. If only he would have been forced to take his medication like he had been forced to take it in Arizona. If only the mental health care workers had seen he truly did need help.
If only.
Pushing for a change
Arizona laws about the treatment of the mentally ill are different than most other states.
“All of mental health law is a delicate balance between individual rights and community rights,” said Chick Arnold, a Phoenix attorney who specializes in mental health law. “When the scales tip, community rights prevail.”
And that is one way, Arnold says, in which Arizona differs from other states — tipping them toward community rights and making sure there’s a way to protect the community.
Most states, he said, have three standards by which a person can be civilly committed to a mental health institution: If the person is deemed to be a danger to himself, if a person is deemed to be a danger to others, or if a person is “gravely disabled” by his mental illness. Arizona, adds a fourth standard: If the person is “persistently or acutely disabled.”
What that means, Arnold said, is that without treatment, the person is “likely to become dangerous.”
And he should know. He wrote the law.
That’s not to say the law always works. Jared Loughner — the man who shot and wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wounded 12 others and killed six others, including a 9-year-old girl — did so in Tucson, the same city in which Joel Reuter went to school.
The problem, Arnold said, is not the law but the fact that even in Arizona, where it’s been the law of the land for a decade, some people do not know about it. If they did, then people at Pima Community College, from which Loughner had been suspended until he sought mental health treatment, could have worked to have Loughner committed and treated before the shooting occurred.
“We don’t have to wait until tragedy happens,” Arnold said.
And it is that sort of law that Doug Reuter wants to see enacted across the country, beginning in Washington state where his son died.
“It’s almost criminal the way the laws deal with mental illness and the treatment of the mentally ill,” said Doug Reuter, who plans on becoming a registered lobbyist to push for a change in the laws. “You can’t look to someone who is mentally ill to make reasonable decisions. Once they’re off their meds for a couple of weeks, they’re no longer capable of making reasonable decisions. … The government has to say, ‘You’re not capable of making that decision. We’re going to make it for you.’”
Former state Rep. Mindy Greiling, who represented Roseville in the Minnesota House for 20 years before retiring earlier this year, would like to see a law similar to the Arizona law enacted in Minnesota.
“It would be a healthy thing for Minnesota and all states to look at that kind of law,” Greiling said.
A long-time advocate for reform of mental health laws in the state, Grieling — who served with Doug Reuter in the House and whose son, like Reuter’s son, suffers from mental illness — understands that the issue is controversial because it brings up the question of the civil rights of individuals with mental illness. Specifically, she said, there are those who advocate for the right of mentally ill people not to do what they don’t want to do. And that would mean not taking their meds if they choose not to take their meds.
But there is the problem, she said.
“Often times, people with mental illness don’t recognize they’re ill,” she said.
And there are those who disagree.
Sue Abderholden, the executive director of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Minnesota, is hesitant about the idea of forcing people to take their meds.
“I don’t think that’s the best thing,” she said.
Joel Reuter (Image: Owatonna People’s Press)
In part, she said, not everyone becomes a danger to themselves or to others.
“How do you choose who you’re going to force medication on?” Abderholden said.
At the same time, she notes there are problems with commitment laws.
“In some ways, it’s too late,” she said. “You’ve got someone developing mental illness, sometimes for a long period, before they meet the standard (for commitment). Days, weeks can go by and nothing will happen.”
That is the problem that the Reuters felt with mental health officials in Washington who told them that their son did not meet the criteria to be hospitalized.
“Politicians like to point at guns in order to distract from the lack of treatment for the mentally ill,” Doug Reuter said. “They do absolutely nothing to help the mentally ill. Yes, checks and balances need to be in place to protect civil liberties. But I don’t think Joel’s civil liberties were violated at all.”
A memorial service for Joel Reuter was held Saturday at Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Memorials are preferred to Treatment Advocacy Center, 200 N. Glebe Road, Suite 730, Arlington, VA 22203.
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I disagree with the risk-benefit analysis of “If we can change the law and save one life, it would be worth it.”
It should be possible to develop a reasonable estimate of the number of lives saved vs. the number of civil rights infringements given a change in mental illness laws. Only then can one make an informed decision as to the desirability of such a change.
Personally, I’d like everyone to receive any proven effective treatment. Personally, I’m queasy about committing people against their “will”. Luckily, I don’t have to decide.
dear umvu blue. I understand the reluctance to value one life that highly. Or programs that highly if I might reframe to comparison.
Lives saved is a hard bean to count. how do we know which lives were saved that would not have been? and the agregate numbers of less deaths once a program is effective does not filter other causes. hopefully one is honest about the people in a certain defineable population of at risk. hopefully. We see issues around prop63 in cal and who it supplied service to and how the numbers were whitewashed to allow diverson. Numbers cant lie, but invested interests have and will continue to use them that way. A “number of civil rights infringements” is a reasonable phrase…until looked at. Are we counting any, all cases where some person is reluctant? are we counting equally court ordered cases where one is already being infringed by jail time infringing upon freedom? and why should mental health courts be subjected to higher “shall not infringe” standards than courts of criminality? If a man is stepping in front of a truck doing 50…am I infringing his rights? Was the shelter I worked at “infringing” the right to sleep in a dumpster that is regularly picked up, dumped and compacted without checking for sleepers inside, when they reported to police and got him into an involuntary hold as a danger to himself? What is “infringement” and what is “compassion?” Do you have the right to bleed in the street, freeze in the alley and refuse to go to treatment that can save your life? Where is the social contract there? where is the Christian values there? And where is the right to take the subways without worrying that some other person in the crowd is there to push you because he had the right to say no to treatment? Does one delusional person’s right to make a poorly informed choice trump the majority of sane persons’ personal rights to be safe? that sounds like a tyrany of the minority. arent we against that in this nation?
the focus on self-determination of the extremely and dangerously mentally ill should be reconsidered. for their own safety and dignity
after yet two more subway pushings in NYC, the schizophrenic who killed Kendra by trainpushing wrote an editorial. He was perplexed that his right to be free had trumped the rights of the public, Kendra for just one, to be safe. He noted that the more recent trainpushings that spurred him to write…were by persons known to be unstable and dangerous, yet the state considered itself tied to the old rules of conduct rather than the “public safety” standards we are coming to push for. the old standard? “call us when there has been a killing.” in short.
I don’t like this road America is going down where we see anyone with a mental illness as an inherent threat. These are human beings we’re talking about, not an infestation of rats. Isolated incidents don’t change my mind that this course of behavior is like a new Holocaust.
I understand what you mean; there is a problematic stereotype that the mentally ill are more likely to be violent, which isn’t true. From the studies I’ve read, they’re much more likely to BE victims of violence. Yet part of the push behind laws such as the one discussed in the article is that the mentally ill can be a danger to themselves, and living with untreated mental illness can severely compromise their own welfare. To that end, being able to treat people isn’t only about protecting the community; it’s also about being able to help those who are unable to make treatment decisions for themselves.
they are humans before intervention, and hopefully better , happier ones after. Without intervention they are too often…statistics. And often others are also statistics. It deaths are not as important as absolute unrestrained freedom for all, lets just empty all the prisons and see where your utopian “freedom” against the totalitarian state gets us. P.S. not all state intervention is totalitarian. what about driving licenses and the need to pass a competency test before navigating a deadly machine at high speeds? what about “age of consent” laws? should 12 year olds have the right to consent…as they once did barely a century past? Give up the wolf wolf totalitarians coming to take us away…until there is a call justifying it.
Excellent report.
Adding the Arizona approach to our existing laws would be a step in the right direction, providing a framework for those who have lost the awareness of their own illness and need for medication to be cared for, while respecting their rights and autonomy, once they can again care for themselves.
It’s so sensible, there’s probably zero chance of our legislature considering it.
Thank you for the very thoughtful and professionally written article. We collectively need to reach a better place and a better balance in this state for and with the mentally ill and the topic of intervention options. But thank you for a rare fresh breath of balanced and considerate journalism.
There are civil commitment laws in Washington state as well. Washington has the Involuntary Treatment Act, RCW 71.05. Our former gravely schizophrenic neighbor was comitted under this and required to participate in outpatient treatment.
calhoun is correct. our state will have a broader commitment permission…soon. If people are educated to it and know how to engage in the system. I have some doubts of that being very swift, of very well recieved by those already in positions of authority. “we shall see” as said Count K. and “we” shall watch and see, I promise!
Thank you for this very well-written and researched update on the tragedy that was Joel’s death. I feel really bad for his parents, who obviously did everything they could to help their son. And I thank them for not blaming the police (as so many in Seattle tend to do), but instead our ineffective mental health system.
The contrast between the Arizona’s commitment laws and ours is stark. The truth is that, had Joel stayed in Arizona and not moved to a state where the laws prevented him from getting help, he would almost certainly be alive today.
This is Jeffrey Jackson, the author of this article. I should note a few things:
• If the story seems to have a bit of a different focus, it’s with good reason. I’m a newspaper editor in a small town in Minnesota. Hence, the Minnesota focus.
• I want to thank the good folks at Capitol Hill Seattle Blog for their generosity in sharing photos of the July 5th incident (the best photos that anyone seem to have in the city that I could find) for our print publication and for asking if they could print our story. It’s good to get this story out there.
• I also want to thank Doug and Nancy Reuter, who approached me about the story. Their candidness was refreshing.
• I did want to note that I attempted last week to get in touch with the folks from Washington state’s NAMI, but was unable. I received a phone call back from the Washington NAMI this morning (Monday). Unfortunately, it was too late for our story (which was already long enough as it was). I didn’t address the further with the woman who called me because it was not pertinent to Minnesota readers since this story has gone to press, but it would make a great follow-up story in Washington.
Jeffery, if you are following the commentaries here ( i logged in but could not post in southminn.com) please contact me vis waltinseattle at gmail. Lets discuss legislation and NAMI…whom I met after my son killed 5 then himself…over a cup of coffee at Racer Cafe here in Seattle.
Walt, I’ll bring this to Jeffrey’s attention and help connect you.
Unfortunately, I’ve been attacked in this area by someone who was mentally unstable (tackled from behind and slammed into the pavement). When they caught him down the street, he honestly thought he was Roger Rabbit and was hitting himself. I ended up being fine, a small concussion and some scratches, but when the police asked me if I wanted to press charges I told them I wanted to do whatever got this man the help he obviously needed. I went through with pressing charges and showing up to numerous trials to testify not because I was vindictive that he had hurt me but because it was the only way they could commit him at all and be committed a period of time longer than 2 weeks (I learned during the trial that this would be his 4th time committed after violent attacks); myself and 3 others getting physically attacked shouldn’t be what it takes for him to get the help he needed.
As far as new proposed laws go, why is it an assumed thing that if people are forced to get help that they will have pills shoved down their throats against their will? Why is that the assumed “treatment” they are being forced to take? Or, is it just an easy, hot button counter-argument for pro-civil rights people to use? Couldn’t there be safe guards put into place within these laws that other options of treatment would be tried first before medication was forcefully given, if at all?
Still, I wonder how these laws would mix with laws for people found to be under the influence of heavy drugs (for instance, meth). I’m sure someone will call me out for over generalizing, but a lot of people in Cap Hill appear to now be mentally unstable due to prolonged/current drug use, not necessarily a pre-existing mental illness.
I am the father of a gravely mentally disabled son. He received extensive treatment “against his will” up to the age of 18. Graduated from HS and was med compliant, no issues with the law. Turned 18 and had the right to come off his meds and there was nothing we could do about it. He is now headed to prison for a very long time, we tried everything to get conservatorship but as the article stated he didn’t meet the criteria although he did for 6 years prior to turning 18. The law is a @#$$ joke and I have lost my son because of it.
[…] 28-year-old Joel Reuter was shot dead by police after an hours-long standoff in which he reportedly eventually opened fire on officers. No police officers were injured by the gunfire. Reuter’s family is now fighting for changes in mental illness laws. […]
arizona law – now! is it killing them? then it won’t kill us.
I knew Joel personally for over 12 years and just found out about this yesterday. Terribly sad. He was definitely no longer himself after March when I started seeing what he was posting on Facebook and was probably in need of some help in regards to other medical issues going on at the time. I wish I knew why he went off his meds and hope Joel’s parents fight the good fight. This country for too long is giving mental illness a brush under the rug and it’s finally rearing it’s ugly head in the last few years.
[…] family, meanwhile, continues to push for changes in mental health laws that they said prevented them from doing more to protect their loved one and force him to get […]
If the State and various non profits would quit putting housing for the mentally ill in dense downtown and neighborhoods surrounding we’d all be a bit better off. Case in point, a new building for 40 outpatient self-supervised live-in mental patients is currently being built at Republican and Boylston. Agencies and developers make money on that deal, Broadway Ave and surrounding neighbors get 24/7 mentally unstable people living among us.
Not awesome.
But the State and various agencies think this is a great idea. Stick them down here with us, rather than in a safe facility someplace away from people they might attack without provocation.
[…] from their tragic loss. This week the Reuter’s, who live in Texas, were in Olympia to lobby the legislature to change mental health laws in the state. Following the inquest hearing, Nancy Reuter said she didn’t blame the police for […]
[…] and Nancy Reuter testified Monday that their son, Joel Reuter, might not have died in a shootout with Seattle police if his family could have convinced authorities to commit him for his deteriorating mental […]
[…] Reuter, whose son Joel died in a shootout with Seattle police, were on hand Friday to see the House of Representatives pass a bill that would allow the families […]