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SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY NEWS
By Eleanor Yang
SAN CLEMENTE-The family of a San Clemente woman stabbed to death
at her shelter home apartment last November has filed a lawsuit
against the shelter and Orange County alleging wrongful death
and negligence. The guardian for the children of the victim, 38-year-old
Rena Glisson, asserted in the suit filed this week in Orange County
Superior Court, that Orange County was negligent in "hiring,
managing, maintaining, inspecting and controlling" Henderson
House, a San Clemente halfway house.
Oliver Wayne Glisson, the plaintiff and guardian for the two children,
both minors, also said the county "was negligent in its failure
to provide proper warning and properly investigate residents of
the facility," as well as being "negligent in that it
had prior knowledge of the murderess' violent tendencies and failed
to warn of her violent past tendencies." The incident occurred
November 6th, when witnesses at Henderson House said
they heard two women arguing. A short while later, one witness
found Glisson lying against a stairway near the courtyard of the
complex. Days later, Diona Minicucci, 27, of San Clemente was
arrested in connection with Glisson's death. Henderson House, the first shelter of its type in San Clemente, has been lauded for helping homeless adults, especially those recovering from substance abuse or mental illness, make the transition from shelter life to independent living. It provides housing for up to a year to those who have completed a rehabilitation program at Friendship Shelter in Laguna Beach. Friendship Shelter also is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. SOURCE: Excerpted from the 4 June, 1999, issue of the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, from an article, "Shelter, County Sued in Resident's Slaying." Reprinted in the public interest.(DP ONLINE EDITOR: The fact that a secondary shelter program has to be established to provide assistance for up to a year, proves that the rehabilitation program in place at the Friendship Shelter in Laguna Beach is a failure. The Shelter allows individuals so many days, and then they are rotated back out onto the street, so the shelter gets its statistics that guarantee more public funds, but the homeless remain homeless. In a properly operated homeless program, the homeless are harmless. But without services, they are in effect left to their own devices, and they are not harmless. Existing services are not serving the homeless population, but are only fulfilling their own narrow "missions," sometimes duplicating services, and always in rivalry with each other for what resources are available. The only way for the homeless crisis to be addressed is on a nationwide, statewide and countywide basis, whereby resources are coordinated to guarantee that there are NO people living on the street at night, anywhere. As long as anyone is excluded from the social contract of civilization, we cannot expect them to behave as civilized people, and if even a minority of the people are not civilized, we are in trouble. Right now, enough money is being spent to handle the homeless crisis, if it were not being siphoned off through institutional rivalries and the failure of leadership). |
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