Virginia lawmakers propose change in response to death of Charles Byers: 'This was a system failure'

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. — A Virginia lawmaker said she's considering proposing legislation to tighten a gap in the overlap of the mental health and legal systems, after reviewing the circumstances surrounding the death of Charles Byers.

Byers was shot and killed by a Chesterfield Police officer on July 8, 2023 after two officers responded to reports of a breaking and entering in a neighborhood and found Byers carrying a hatchet.

Police would later learn that Byers was in the midst of a mental health crisis and under an active court order to receive psychiatric treatment, leading to questions about why he was out on the street at the time instead of being in a hospital.

Watch: Charles Byers body cam footage

"It was a perfect storm of things that could go wrong, went wrong," Delegate Debra Gardner (D - Chesterfield) told CBS 6. "It seems like the system failed Mr. Byers from the private hospital, to law enforcement, to the legal system."

The chain of events began July 5 when Byers suffered an episode of his schizoaffective disorder and his mother took him to Chippenham Hospital.

While there, Byers was found wandering the halls and confused.

Early the next morning, a Richmond magistrate placed him under a temporary detention order (TDO).

The TDO required Byers to be involuntarily held at the hospital for up to 72 hours, because he was determined unable to care for himself.

But records showed Byers was only admitted for about three hours before an altercation with staff led him to being forcibly removed from the hospital and arrested, without being seen by a psychiatrist and without notification to Byers' family.

Watch: Charles Byers' family to add Chesterfield County, officer that shot son as defendants in lawsuit

The Richmond Police officer who arrested Byers was heard on body camera video telling Byers, "Right now, you're probably going to jail instead of staying here for treatment."

Richmond Police Chief Rick Edwards would later admit that the arresting officer did not know Byers was under a TDO, and an investigation of the hospital's noncompliance with federal regulations found medical staff never told police about the TDO.

"It was a big communication lapse," Gardner said.

Watch: Parents see body-cam video of their mentally ill son hours before he was killed

While the legislature requires public facilities to honor TDOs, Gardner said lawmakers should consider the same level of accountability for private entities.

"For most private facilities, it's a matter of liability for them and a matter of costs, but as with every other entity such as theirs, they have a moral and ethical responsibility to the patients that they serve. As far as us being able to mandate that, to this point, we have not done it." Gardner said. "We don't stop that fight, though. We have to continue to try."

Shortly after Byers' arrest, in the evening of July 6, he went before a Richmond magistrate on an assault charge at the Richmond City Justice Center.

The magistrate chose to release Byers as long as he promised to show up in court the next day, which he did not.

When CBS 6 previously asked whether magistrates would know whether a defendant before them was under an active TDO, a spokesperson for the Virginia court system said they only consider information presented to them by the law enforcement officer and defendant.

A magistrate's bail determination checklist does not mandate that they check for active mental health related custody orders, such as a TDO, during a criminal proceeding.

That checklist is governed by the General Assembly.

"Do you think that there should be a requirement for a magistrate to look for something like that in these cases?" reporter Tyler Layne asked.

"I do," Gardner responded. "And that is some legislation that I'm willing to take a look at moving forward for a possibility in the next session."

State Senator Ghazala Hashmi (D - Chesterfield) agrees.

"I think that is an absolutely necessary next step for us to take a look at at the state level," Hashmi told CBS 6. "Making those kinds of reforms as you've just outlined on our checklist, so that everyone who's involved around the care and the treatment and response to someone experiencing a crisis is an important way for us to address the situation immediately, and to protect not just the patient in crisis, but also public safety."

Byers' parents have been speaking out exclusively to CBS 6 with hopes of getting the attention of lawmakers.

They said they support changes that would tighten any potential communication or oversight gaps in how agencies respond to people in mental health crises who require judicial intervention.

"The hospital knew that Charlie was under a temporary detention order. But had they communicated that to the police? Had the police communicated that to the magistrate?" Peggy Byers said. "All of those entities should have known that he was never to leave the hospital, or if he had to leave Chippenham, he would have been sent to a different hospital. There's no just letting someone go who's under a temporary detention order."

On July 8, 36 hours after Byers was released from the hospital, he had a fatal encounter with Chesterfield Police in a neighborhood about half a mile from his house.

Body camera video showed Byers retreating from officers while holding a hatchet and not complying with orders to drop it. After about 45 seconds, an officer shot at Byers five times as he continued to back away, and the officer shot two more times at his back as Byers turned around to run away.

The Commonwealth's Attorney justified the officer's actions.

Both lawmakers believe General Assembly action could prevent something like this from happening again and said they're committed to figuring out solutions.

"The more we listen to families and to individuals who have experienced and gone through this kind of tragedy, the better our legal systems are and our mental health systems are," Hashmi said.

"In this situation, I don't think everything that could have been done was done to save this person's life," Gardner said. "I do believe this was a system failure."

The legislators also commented on how Chesterfield Police responded to the call for service, prior to the shooting. In part two of this story, we'll explain their concerns and why implementation of police reform legislation passed in 2020 has stalled in Virginia.

CBS 6 reached out to every member of the Chesterfield delegation to request interviews for this story. The other members either declined to comment or did not respond.