The director of the Wisconsin Center for Suicide Awareness says the horrific case of a Fond du Lac man charged with a hate crime raises questions about our mental health system. Authorities say Daniel Navarro intentionally crashed his pickup truck into a motorcyclist killing the operator, Phillip Theisen of Fond du Lac, because he was white. Navarro said he believed people had poisoned and contaminated him, made racist comments and intentionally drive by his house revving their engines and squealing their tires to upset him because he is Mexican. Barb Biglaki says those kinds of statements raise questions about his mental health. “The continual perception, and perception can be reality, was I being poisoned? Are they after me? You get a sense of paranoia. Are people out to get me?” Bigalki told WFDL news. Bigalki says we need to start looking through a wider lens. She says while it doesn’t excuse Navarro’s behavior, she says, the case is an extreme reaction out of emotion. Bigalki says the case also raises questions about our mental health system in general. Fond du Lac police officers responding to a domestic violence incident last year involving Navarro attempted to have a 72 hour mental health hold placed on Navarro but the request was denied by the crisis hotline. Navarro’s parents said their son does not have a primary care doctor and any treatment he received would have been through an emergency room visit. “We found the crack in the mental health system,” Bigalki said. “There was a golden window of opportunity. There was a time when officers did try to say we might have some mental health issues and making that call. But he (Navarro) didn’t fit into the system.” A preliminary hearing for Navarro is scheduled for this Friday.
