<\/p>\n
George Garber, 72, holds a diary logging decades of mental health-related incidents related to his stepson, Damian Hisle, 52, on Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, at his home in Lexington, Kentucky.<\/p>\n
Jesse Fraga<\/p>\n
jfraga@herald-leader.com<\/p>\n
A man suspected of a hate crime<\/a> near the University of Kentucky has been repeatedly found incompetent to stand trial and committed to a mental health treatment facility in criminal cases since at least the 1990s in Lexington, court records show.<\/p>\n The family of 52-year-old suspect Damian Hisle says he has been diagnosed with severe paranoid schizophrenia, and he has never been properly treated in order to prevent events such as the one that happened outside a UK hospital on Aug. 11, in which he allegedly harassed and threatened a woman wearing a hijab.<\/p>\n Hisle\u2019s stepparents, George Garber and Sharon Hackworth, say Hisle has \u201clived in more places than you can count,\u201d including psychiatric hospitals, homeless shelters and jails, as well as on the street. He has regularly found himself in courtrooms over the last 30 years.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing lasts,\u201d Garber, 72, said. \u201cI\u2019ve kind of run out of optimism.\u201d<\/p>\n Garber and Hackworth say Hisle has sought help for his mental health, but the aid has only ever been temporary.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a bigger story here,\u201d Garber told the Herald-Leader. \u201cI have no doubt that he did it. The question is why he was in a position to commit this act at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Hisle has faced over two dozen charges since 1999 in Lexington. He has faced charges including harassment, assault, terroristic threats, criminal mischief, assault on a correctional officer while incarcerated, menacing, alcohol intoxication in a public place, disorderly conduct, robbery and possession of marijuana, court records show.<\/p>\n Judges usually found him guilty of incidents until late 2014. But in the decade since, judges have dismissed most charges against him and ordered him to be committed to a few days in hospitals \u2014 usually Eastern State Hospital\u2019s psychiatric facility \u2014 according to court records.<\/p>\n \u201cBut then in a very short time, I mean \u2026 it\u2019s a very low stress, safe environment, so he\u2019s really well-behaved,\u201d Garber said. \u201cAfter a few days of that, they\u2019re ready to send him out.\u201d<\/p>\n But Hisle\u2019s schizophrenia prevents him from willingly continuing treatment, his stepdad told the Herald-Leader.<\/p>\n \u201cHe only gets treatment when he\u2019s locked up,\u201d Garber said. \u201cSomebody like Damian, he\u2019s proven to us that he can\u2019t survive on the outside.\u201d<\/p>\n .<\/p>\n Hoda A. Shalash reported she was verbally harassed and threatened while wearing a hijab near a UK hospital where she works on Aug. 11, according to her Facebook<\/a> and a police citation.<\/p>\n Court records say Hisle harassed and threatened her, while Shalash\u2019s Facebook post also accuses him of spitting on her.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m disgusted and ashamed by the fact that this man felt so confident to be outwardly hateful,\u201d Shalash said on Facebook. \u201cImmediately I began to fear for the safety of every Muslim woman on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n She did not respond to the Herald-Leader\u2019s request for comment on this story.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The Lexington Police Department said in a news release it was a \u201creported hate crime.\u201d<\/p>\n Like many times before, a judge has filed a commitment order for Hisle in this case, court records show.<\/p>\n Garber said he is empathetic for Shalash and other victims, but he wishes Hisle could get more help to prevent future problems.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel bad for him. I\u2019d like to see him get a better deal, and I also feel bad about the people that he attacks,\u201d Garber said. \u201cIt\u2019s not right for somebody who can do those dangerous things to be out in a position to do them.\u201d<\/p>\n Mental health struggles make recidivism more likely<\/p>\n Recidivism, or re-incarceration, rates are higher among people with mental health and alcohol use disorders than those without, according to studies by Case Western Reserve University<\/a> and the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry<\/a>.<\/p>\n Legal, social and political intersections have \u201cled to the current epidemic of psychiatric disorders in the U.S. prison system,\u201d according to the National Library of Medicine<\/a>.<\/p>\n Continuity of care that involves routine treatment and partnerships between the criminal justice system, mental health providers and social services reduces the likelihood of arrests among people with severe mental illnesses, according to a 2022 study published on Psychiatry Online<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jail environments only exacerbate mental health issues<\/a> among incarcerated people, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. Increased efforts to free people with mental illnesses from jails has put more pressure on mental health providers to keep up, according to a study by the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, with decarceration and the release of many such persons, the mental health system may be expected to assume more responsibility for them and should be prepared and funded to meet their needs,\u201d the study says.<\/p>\n Banned from homeless shelters<\/p>\n Hisle also spends short stints in homeless shelters. But he eventually breaks the shelter rules, gets banned and ends up on the street again, his stepparents said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe can\u2019t even stay in a shelter now because he\u2019ll sooner or later do something outrageous that they can\u2019t allow,\u201d Garber said. \u201cJust recently they had him sign a promissory note that he would not cause any trouble with the Hope Center,\u201d Hackworth, 71, said.<\/p>\n The Hope Center, one of Lexington\u2019s largest nonprofits helping people who are homeless or with substance use issues, gave Hisle a \u201csecond chance, but that lasted about two days,\u201d then he was asked to leave, Garber said.<\/p>\n Chris Peck, chief advancement officer for the Hope Center, said there\u2019s a gap in services for people with severe mental health issues.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s definitely a gap right now in the city of Lexington, is a strong program that deals with the severe mentally ill,\u201d Peck told the Herald-Leader.<\/p>\n People can be banned for a year from the Hope Center\u2019s shelter due to violence or drug use in the facility, according to Peck. Anyone who is barred from the shelter is still welcomed to its cafeteria, which provides three free meals a day for anyone in the community.<\/p>\n The Hope Center also has two vans that offer food, clothes and medical care resources to people on the street.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s something we mull around all the time is how to make an impact on that population, and you know for us it\u2019s just a matter of available resources to do that, and so we\u2019re applying for different funding streams and grants and different things to hopefully help that group in the future,\u201d Peck said.<\/p>\n Local police handle crisis on a \u2018case by case basis\u2019<\/p>\n Lexington police officers sometimes recognize Hisle and call an ambulance if he\u2019s in crisis, according to Garber.<\/p>\n \u201cThe police in Lexington are really pretty well trained in how to deal with mentally ill people, and they don\u2019t arrest Damian if he\u2019s just acting crazy on the street,\u201d Garber said.<\/p>\n But officers who don\u2019t recognize him have more quickly arrested him, according to Garber. Hisle was arrested by the UK Police Department on Sept. 27, 2022, over alleged alcohol intoxication and threatening police, according to a citation.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the same event had happened with the Lexington police, it wouldn\u2019t have been charged the same way,\u201d Garber said.<\/p>\n Lexington and UK police take crisis intervention training to identify and handle people with mental health issues and disabilities, according to Lexington Police Sgt. Bige Towery and Dani Jaffe, a UK spokesperson.<\/p>\n \u201cThis training helps our officers kind of become familiar with what a mental health crisis looks like, and those warning signs that someone may be in a crisis,\u201d Jaffe said. \u201cAnd part of that is identifying if an individual is a danger to themselves or others.\u201d<\/p>\n Officers handle each incident on a \u201ccase by case basis,\u201d Jaffe told the Herald-Leader.<\/p>\n \u201cIf an individual has been identified to be a danger to themselves or others, they can be emergency detained and then taken to a mental health facility like our empath unit,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then, if a crime was (allegedly) committed, charges can still be filed against that individual.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to the crisis intervention training, LPD participates in the Lexington Community Paramedicine Program, led by the Lexington Fire Department.<\/p>\n It encourages \u201cproactive, people-centered care \u2026 addressing root causes of frequent emergency service use,\u201d Towery said. \u201cThe program works to bridge gaps in care and meet people where they are\u2014physically, emotionally and socially.\u201d<\/p>\n Garber said people with severe mental health issues need better solutions for long term care, such as greater access to residential facilities.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the best thing for people like Damian would be something closer to the treatment that severely mentally ill people got before deinstitutionalization, where they went to a place that wasn\u2019t really a hospital-like setting,\u201d Garber said. \u201cHe could live out his life in a place like that.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published September 1, 2026 at 5:00 AM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Garber, 72, holds a diary logging decades of mental health-related incidents related to his stepson, Damian Hisle,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":["post-833789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}