Patient spared solitary death

RICHMOND — César Augusto Chumil, 59, a deeply ill mental patient hospitalized over a 30-year period in his native Guatemala and in Virginia, has died.

Chumil’s death came three weeks after he had been moved from Western State Hospital to a Northern Virginia mental facility, where he was able to live out his last days in an unlocked room, among other patients, and with daily visits from his family.

“His last days showed the failure of a system that had lost sight of the patient,” said attorney Alex R. Gulotta.

Gulotta had represented Chumil and his family in efforts to gain his release from Western State, where he had been held since 1986, most of that time in restraints or in different levels of confinement.

Combative, given to violent outbursts, and possessing a record of hundreds of attacks on dedicated caregivers, Chumil spent his last days in failing health but conversing happily with family members and free to come and go from a two-room suite at the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute, Gulotta said.

Gulotta said Chumil died Oct. 19 from complications of colon cancer, which had delayed his move from Western State in Staunton and forced his hospitalization at the University of Virginia Medical Center.

Chumil showed signs of mental illness as a child and was later diagnosed with severe paranoia, anti-social personality disorder and schizophrenia. He was civily committed in Virginia.

“It is a terribly sad story that confirms the family’s belief that César’s life could have been very different” had his family been closer to him and more involved in his care, Gulotta said.

Gulotta said that Chumil’s funeral was attended by caregivers from Western State, and he praised the efforts of James S. Reinhard, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, to facilitate Chumil’s transition from Western State.

“I have had the pleasure of working with the family about their loved one’s care and treatment. My thoughts and condolences go to the family,” Reinhard said in a statement released Tuesday.

Gulotta, executive director of the Charlottesville-based Legal Aid Justice Center, and Nathan J.D. Veldhuis had worked years to gain Chumil’s release, arguing that Western State lacked the ability or the will to address Chumil’s mental illness.

Chumil’s family testified at hearings that his years of confinement, lack of socialization and the failure of the hospital to use his native language in communicating with him had stripped him of his will to live.

Chumil spent the last several years at Western State in a three-room locked suite but was not allowed to circulate among other patients even though he was able to go on brief shopping trips with his family unescorted.

“Sometimes he tell me that he wants to die, because it’s no way to be alive in that room,” one family member testified in April 2008 at a Human Rights Committee hearing.

Gulotta said Tuesday that Chumil’s death with his family by his side meant that his greatest fear — dying at Western State in seclusion — was not realized.

Bill McKelway is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.