Subcommitee recommends passage of bill allowing family access to mental patients in emergency-room crisis
RICHMOND – The mother of a man who died last year while in law-enforcement custody at Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County had one simple request of a group of state lawmakers.
Caroline Ouko reminded a House Courts of Justice subcommittee Monday that Gov. Glenn Youngkin was asking for unanimous support of the proposal dubbed “Irvo’s Law” in her son’s memory.
“Please,” Ouko said at the end of her testimony, “make it happen.”
House Bill 1242 would allow family members and caregivers of patients in medical crisis unfettered access to their loved ones during emergency treatment. It was given the name Irvo’s Law after Henrico County resident Irvo Noel Otieno.
The bill’s sponsor, Del. Rodney Willett, D-Henrico, said it acknowledges “the vital role that family members or legal guardian in facilitating informed decision-making and support during a mental-health emergency while also improving short-term and long-term mental-health outcomes.”
Otieno was 28 years old on March 3, 2023, when Henrico County police officers acting on an allegation of neighborhood burglary took him to Parham Doctors Hospital under an emergency custody order. Ouko, his mother and primary caregiver, said she “pleaded” with emergency-room personnel at Parham Doctors to let her back there with her son “who was calling for me.”
Her requests were denied, and Otieno was taken from the hospital to the Henrico Jail West without her seeing him.
“This separation prevented me from advocating for my son,” Ouko said. “I believe that had I been able to see my son, he would never have been taken from the hospital. Irvo would be alive today.”
Three days later on March 6, Otieno was taken to Central State Hospital by county deputies and died during what the deputies claimed was efforts to resist them.
Surveillance video from the hospital showed the seven deputies and three CSH security guards pinning Otieno to the floor of the intake unit for more than 11 minutes. Otieno – who was shirtless, barefoot and catatonic in the video – suffocated to death beneath the deputies and guards.
The 10 people involved in Otieno’s death were arrested for second-degree murder. Those charges have since been dropped against two of the hospital security guards. The trials for the seven deputies and one security guard will start in June in Dinwiddie Circuit Court.
In a speech last month at the Library of Virginia, Youngkin pushed for the establishment of Irvo’s Law as part of his administration’s agenda to improve mental-health treatment. An administration official was one of the eight people who spoke in favor of the bill Monday afternoon.
Those speakers included Otieno's brother, Leon Ochieng.
"The closest person to you is the person who knows what you're dealing with, and my mother was refused that right," Ochieng said.
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No one spoke in opposition.
The subcommittee voted 8-0 to recommend the full committee pass the bill. The earliest that could happen is Wednesday afternoon.
Companion legislation from Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Henrico, is before the Senate Education & Health Committee and could be heard Thursday morning.
Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.
This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Victim's mother pushes passage of Irvo's Law
