MAHONING COUNTY Killer refuses medicine, so he loses his freedom

Charles Ingram said his medicine made him feel drunk, so he quit taking it.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Charles Ingram would still be a free man if only he had taken his medicine.
Instead, he's in the Mahoning County Jail waiting to be taken back to a psychiatric hospital, where he had already spent 10 years before being released into the community two years ago.
Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of common pleas court terminated Ingram's conditional release and placed him back in psychiatric care.
Ingram, 50, formerly of Dale Street, was committed to psychiatric care in 1992 for killing his aunt, 63-year-old Louise Simpson-Nolan, in April of that year. Police said Ingram stabbed the woman in her neck with scissors.
His illness
A psychiatric evaluation in 2000 showed that he suffered from a type of schizophrenia involving "persecutory delusions and bizarre thinking" at the time. He was deemed innocent by reason of insanity in October 2000.
With court approval, Ingram was released from hospital care in June 2002 and allowed to return to the community. He first lived at the Burdman Group Home, but was later allowed to move from there and live on his own.
"He was doing well," said his attorney, Mark Lavelle of New Middletown. "He was living in an apartment, he had a job and a car."
The problem was that after he was no longer under the group home's care, Ingram stopped taking medication that had been prescribed to him by his psychiatric doctors.
In a letter to Judge Sweeney, Linda Blum of Turning Point Counseling Services said Ingram began "exhibiting changes in his stability" in May 2004. She said Ingram was expressing paranoid thoughts and suspicions.
Wouldn't take it
As a result, his treating psychologist increased Ingram's medication, but Ingram refused to take the medicine because he said it made him feel drunk, Blum wrote.
She wrote that he consistently refused to take his medications as required by the court.
Assistant Prosecutor Robert Andrews said Ingram now must start at the bottom level of psychiatric care and again advance to the level of conditional release. He said the process should probably take less than a year because Ingram already has been released once.
bjackson@vindy.com