24-year-old missing from crisis center after transportation mix-up in Bremerton, mom says
A 24-year-old man is missing after a transportation service that was supposed to take him from a mental health crisis center to a doctor appointment in Kitsap County left him at the wrong location, his mother said.
It’s been over 10 days since Tatiana Leone got the call from a nurse at the Crisis Triage Center at Kitsap Mental Health Services (KMHS) at 5455 Almira Dr. NE in Bremerton that they lost her son, Israel Bolar, she told the Gateway.
The Bremerton Police Department confirmed Thursday that Bolar has been reported as a missing person to the National Crime Information Center, and that an officer took a police report made by his mother on Dec. 23. The Gateway obtained a copy of that report through a public records request.
Leone told the Gateway her son voluntarily walked into KMHS on Dec. 22.
KMHS contracts with a local nonprofit organization for transportation called Gather Together Grow Together, also known as G2.
According to Leone the plan was for Bolar to stay at KMHS for about a week and try a new medication under the care of the facility staff. She said KMHS arranged for Bolar to be picked up by G2 around 8 a.m. on Dec. 23 and taken to see a doctor who would prescribe the new medication at Peninsula Community Health.
Leone said Bolar was supposed to go back to KMHS after his doctor’s appointment.
Peninsula Community Health has seven different locations across Bremerton. There’s also one on the Key Peninsula.
Leone said the driver was supposed to take Bolar to the Peninsula Community Health location on Clare Avenue, but mistakenly took him to the location on Sixth Avenue.
The Sixth Avenue location wasn’t open that day.
“This taxi service is transporting vulnerable medical patients who could be in a mentally fragile state,” Leone said. “They dropped my son off at a closed building, at the incorrect address in a dangerous area in town while he was in crisis with no winter supplies, and no phone.”
Leone said the KMHS nurse called her around 10 a.m. on Dec. 23 and said the driver went back for her son after they realized the mistake, but that by then he was gone.
“If you can imagine, that sent me into a panic,” Leone said.
Leone said after she got the call from the nurse, she then called BPD herself and filed a police report. She said for a few days she went and searched for him herself, but wasn’t able to locate him.
“I can only imagine the panic and confusion he felt when he was dropped off at this closed building, and just left there with no way to contact anyone or anything,” Leone said.
What KMHS and the transportation service said
A spokesperson for G2, Stephanie Dent, told the Gateway Thursday that they had two patients Dec. 23, one of whom was Bolar.
According to their records, both of them were dropped off at Peninsula Community Health Services on Sixth Street, she said.
When asked why the patients would have been dropped off at a closed building, Dent said KMHS is responsible for organizing the rides and that the Gateway should talk to KMHS about that detail.
Dent said G2 returned the other patient to KHMS, but they couldn’t find Bolar.
“This is something that happens often, and they just decide that they don’t want to go,” Dent said.
KMHS declined to comment about what happened or about specifics of a patient’s transportation plan due to federal privacy law, KMHS spokesperson Mark Hughes told the Gateway.
“From what I was told, when I asked Crisis Triage what address he was supposed to be taken to and where the taxi was instructed to take him to, they said Claire Avenue,” Leone said. “So I don’t even know how Sixth Street came into the picture.”
Leone said her son currently doesn’t have a phone and that patients in the Crisis Center are not allowed to have any personal belongings, including a phone, during their stay.
Anyone who sees Bolar is asked to call the Bremerton Police Department non-emergency number at 360-473-5220.
