A Shelburne woman who was charged with kidnapping a stranger’s child on a Burlington bus in February was found incompetent to stand trial on Tuesday.
Moyium Willomon, 26, was seen by a psychiatrist from the state Department of Mental Health in March. The doctor concluded that Willomon could not stand trial, according to court documents.
Both the Chittenden County State’s Attorney’s Office and the public defender asked the judge to agree with the psychiatrist’s findings. At a hearing Tuesday in Chittenden County Superior criminal court, Judge John Pacht agreed.
Officer Michael Moran of the Burlington Police Department wrote in an affidavit filed in the case that Willomon grabbed a 2-year-old boy on a Green Mountain Transit bus on Feb. 21 and tried to leave. Bystanders stepped in to stop Willomon, Moran wrote, and the boy’s mother, Jennifer Poirier, was able to secure her son.
Willomon was taken to the University of Vermont Medical Center for a mental health evaluation immediately afterward. Howard Center First Call, a team of on-call mental health professionals, was quoted in the police affidavit as saying that Willomon “needed long term involuntary care as she posed a threat to other families.”
Willomon pleaded not guilty to a kidnapping charge on Feb. 28, when a judge ordered that she undergo a competency evaluation. She was later released from Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington on conditions including that she stay away from children and abstain from using any Green Mountain Transit bus.
Public defender Stacie Johnson said during Tuesday’s competency hearing that Willomon had been receiving treatment at the Brattleboro Retreat. Another hearing was scheduled for May 8 to determine whether Willomon should be hospitalized.
Reached by email on Wednesday, Johnson declined to comment on the case.
Poirier said in an interview on Wednesday that she was upset she didn’t find out about Willomon’s competency decision until the story appeared on WCAX on Tuesday.
“I’ve been treated like I did something wrong this entire time,” Poirier said. “They don’t communicate with me.”