Ameri on the Road Today

Ameri is Homeless

I must skip ahead in my story. Ameri has been on the street in a rural Midwestern town for about two weeks. Ameri had originally been taken to a hospital emergency room in another town by police officers. She was admitted to that hospital's psychiatry ward. Late in September she was found committable by a judge and was to be sent to a state hospital. She was to remain in the first hospital until a bed became available. That did not happen quickly enough for the attending physician and she was found to be annoying by the nursing staff. That staff then found a way to affect a release. She was put into a cab and sent to another county into the custody of a woman that she barely knew. The woman’s boy friend and the father of at least one of her children had been a patient in the same psychiatric ward as my daughter. She stayed there three days or so. She had a falling out with both the woman and the boyfriend and so she left. She sought shelter from a young man that she had just met and so became a guest in his family home along with his parents and younger brothers and sisters. We did not here from Ameri again until she called on Sunday evening, November 6, 2005. She said that she was not going to be in that family any more and so left and found shelter elsewhere. This evening, when I returned home, I found several calls from pay phones on my caller ID. The answer service indicated that she was attempting to make a collect call. No one was here to take the calls. From the caller ID I made return calls to the last number. It was a pizzeria. They had let her use the phone to make a collect call. She had been gone only minutes. The pizzeria was on the on the rural outskirts of the town. I called the sheriff’s dispatch number that I found on the web. I told the dispatcher about the calls and a bit of the hospital story. Her response was that as long as someone is 18 years old they have every right to walk along any highway and have every right to expose themselves to any danger they chose. I broke down into tears of frustration. The dispatcher then asked me to hold. I continued to weep and wait. When she came back on she said that my daughter, Ameri, had been picked up from the roadside by a patrol officer and that she was now sitting in a chair across the room from her. I was asked to hold again. When she came back on she said that she knew of the entire set of circumstances regarding my daughter and that she had been in contact with a police officer with whom I had spoken days ago. They made arrangements for Ameri to have a bed for the night in a safe place. I am to call the police officer tomorrow to make some arrangements. It is now 8:41pm EST on Tuesday, November 8, 2005. My daughter is safe for the night. This nightmare has been going on now since August 28, 2005 when my daughter left home with enough money to catch a Greyhound to Memphis, TN. With the exception of the period of time that she was in the hospital, we have not had a moment of peace.

This whole thing is becoming disjointed and may confuse some. Please accept my apologies. This is a complicated story and it is difficult to tell sequentially. Too much is happening. My phone is ringing again.