A Vermont judge has granted the state permission to transfer a woman who was found incompetent to stand trial for a 1991 workplace shooting spree to a less secure psychiatric facility.
Elizabeth Teague has been involuntarily hospitalized in psychiatric facilities for 22 years after she walked into her former employer, Eveready Battery in Bennington, and shot and killed her supervisor. She shot two other workers before fleeing and being captured near the Canadian border.
Officials from the Department of Mental Health sought an order over the summer to have Teague moved from the Brattleboro Retreat psychiatric hospital to a secure residential psychiatric facility in Middlesex.
Prosecutors argued that Teague’s transfer was being sought, not because she was no longer a danger, but because it would save the state money to have her housed in a less acute and restrictive environment.
Teague has persecutory delusions and paranoid schizophrenia, but has not demonstrated threatening behavior for six years, according to the court decision, and will not present a danger if transferred.
Though Teague is need of continued treatment, a matter she did not contest during this latest court proceeding, the transfer is “reasonably likely to result in improvement” of her condition, Windham Superior Court Judge John Wesley found.
The decision to grant the department’s request for continued treatment at the Middlesex Therapeutic Community Residence will be up for review in a year.
Teague will be moved in the next 10 days, according to a WCAX report.
