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While it’s agreed no wants to see a situation similar to the escape of criminally insane Philip Arnold Paul from the Spokane County Interstate Fair ever again, county commissioners are hopeful for something more: restitution.
The commissioners said Tuesday they planned to bill the state for lost revenue after it was announced that 47-year-old Paul – who remained at large for three days before being recaptured – had left the fairgrounds.
Board Chairman Todd Mielke said the difference between average revenues from gate receipts, carnival tickets and food sales between Thursday afternoon and the Sunday close of the fair was down about $75,500. The reason, he said, is that after it was announced that Paul had escaped around 1 p.m. on Sept. 17, there were far fewer visitors to the fair that afternoon.
“It was like a ghost town,” Mielke said.
Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich has also expressed his desire to seek reimbursement from the Department of Social and Health Services for the cost of searching for Paul and patrolling the fairgrounds.
The sheriff’s office and Spokane Valley Police spent $20,834.88 in overtime, $8,652.87 in regular salary, and $7,873.41 in costs associated with the sheriff’s helicopter. Investigators and air crews spent $133.88 on meals, for a grand total of $37,495.03
On Sept. 23, Eastern State Hospital’s top administrator, Harold “Hal” Wilson, announced he would resign due to fallout from the escape. He and other administrators allowed a field trip for Paul and 31 other mental patients with violent crime histories to visit the fair on “Family Day.” Paul had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and killed a 78-year-old Sunnyside woman 22 years ago because reportedly the voices in this head told him she was a witch.
How ESH could allow the patients could walk freely on the fairgrounds – and then not notify security or the sheriff’s office for two hours after it was noticed Paul was missing – has been a question that has been asked numerous times by community members and public officials from Spokane Valley to Olympia since Sept. 17.
While it’s acknowledged that there are steps being taken at the state level to make certain nothing like Paul’s escape happens again, Commissioner Mark Richard said it only makes sense for the county to come up with some of its own rules.
“If we have to impose common sense, then we do,” Richard said. “To have something like this occur on Family Day, of all days, is beyond comprehension.”
Rich Hartzell, fair director, said he was already working with the county’s legal staff with ways to make sure anyone with a violent background is not allowed at the fair. Officials at ESH purchased tickets in bulk in advance of the fair and received a discount. Hartzell and other county officials hope that tickets bought that way in the future will have to be accompanied with an application form specifying whom they are for.
“I don’t think we should have to do this, but apparently we do,” Hartzell said.
Still, there is a bright spot. Despite the escape, the fair was the third most attended on record.
“It certainly was an interesting fair this year,” Hartzell said. “Usually we have to contend with the weather. This year, it was the economy, road construction and a criminal psychotic. It was a little different this year.”
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By
Mike Huffman
