DATE: Wednesday, October 22, 1997           TAG: 9710220524

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

VIRGINIA [BRIEFS]

Mental hospital's

problems to lead to

release of 100

RICHMOND - Virginia is planning to spend millions of dollars and to release more than 100 mental patients in the next year as part of a plan to fix extensive problems found by a federal investigation at Central State Hospital.

Gov. George Allen has agreed to spend almost $8.7 million by the end of June - and more than $10 million annually - to hire staff and make other changes to improve care of the mentally ill at the hospital, state officials said.

Virginia submitted the plan to the U.S. Department of Justice as part of an effort to satisfy federal concerns about human rights abuses and inadequate patient care at Central State, especially the hospital's forensic unit for mentally ill people from the state's criminal justice system.

The Justice Department focused its investigation on patient care at Central State Hospital near Petersburg after the June 1996 death of patient Gloria Huntley.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that Huntley spent 300 hours in isolation, bound to a bed, in the final month of her life, despite warnings from her doctor one year earlier that restraints could kill her because she suffered from asthma and epilepsy.

Justice Department investigators also discovered that other patients spent long hours restrained and isolated. One patient was in seclusion and restraints for 1,727 hours over an eight-month period, the report said. Another spent 720 hours in restraints or seclusion during four months, and another was secluded or restrained for 668 hours in three months.

Richard E. Kellogg, the state's acting mental health commissioner, said his department had pushed hard for sizable investments in the hospital and its staff.

The plan calls for the hospital to release about 100 patients by next October to cut the number of beds in the hospital's civil wards by one-third and to allow better care by staff.

The administration's plan also would transfer patients out of the forensic unit to a new regional jail in Hopewell and a medium-security ``step-down'' unit on the state institution's grounds. The moves would cut the number of patients in the forensic unit by one-third, with the ultimate goal of reducing the unit's size from almost 190 to 100 patients.

The state also is trying to relieve pressure on Central State by bolstering staff at state mental institutions in the Shenandoah Valley and Northern Virginia, allowing some Central State patients to move to another institution.

Victim's dad: She feared

suspect before her killing

SALEM - Theresa Hodges' father testified Tuesday that his daughter became scared of Earl Bramblett the week before he allegedly killed her along with her husband and two daughters.

On the second day of Bramblett's capital murder trial, David Fulcher testified that he told his daughter to get Bramblett to return the extra house key the family had given him or to change the locks on the doors.

A friend of Hodges', Kathy Dales, testified that she gave the same advice.

But Roanoke County Circuit Judge Roy Willett would not allow Fulcher or Dales to tell jurors what Hodges had told them about Bramblett's behavior because it would be secondhand testimony.

Bramblett, 55, was a family friend who had lived with the family on and off. He is charged with capital murder, first-degree murder, arson and firearm offenses.

Firefighters were called to the family's Vinton home on the morning of Aug. 29, 1994, after a motorist spotted smoke. Inside the smoldering house, they found the four bodies.

Hodges had been strangled and burned. Blaine Hodges and the two girls - 11-year-old Winter and 3-year-old Anah - had been shot in the head.

Bramblett was arrested in July 1996 in South Carolina.

The trial, involving mostly circumstantial evidence, is expected to last three weeks.

COMING UP Today

CHARLOTTESVILLE - First lady Susan Allen announces a program to bring free breast and cervical cancer screening to underserved women in central Virginia.

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