By Kate E. Salute
Fellow Garden Place Community resident Derrick Smith, 35, was arrested and charged with Psoinas's murder.
"There is nobody there," said Ejnes a week after the murder. "I think they have it closed while somebody comes to clean the house. The residents have been taken from there, at least for now."
Ejnes has lived in her Garden Place home for more than 30 years. Pilgrim State Hospital took over the house diagonally across the street from her nearly 16 years ago, meeting much resistance from the surrounding residents who felt that the area already had too many similar group homes.
There was quite a turnout of support for Garden Place residents who were vehemently opposed to the opening of another group home: assemblymen, legislators, the superintendent of the West Hempstead schools and the West Hempstead Civic Oaks Association joined to form the Concerned Citizens of West Hempstead in late 1989, according to Rosalie Norton, current president of the West Hempstead Civic Association. The CCWH has since disbanded.
"They hired an attorney and tried to fight the state," Norton said. "They couldn't stop it because the state, when it designates a certain area, particular residence or building that they want to use as a facility for a state mental health program, it's virtually impossible to stop them because of the way the state charter is written."
Norton has a copy of the legal notice that she believes to be the one that Pilgrim State put in the paper some 16 years ago. The provisions in the notice stated that there would be safeguards in place to protect the community and the patients. Those safeguards, says Norton and Ejnes, never became a reality.
Ejnes said that those safeguards included monthly meetings, background checks to ensure that no one with a violent background would be admitted to the home and a requirement that employees supervising the special-needs adults would be present around the clock in addition to a director.
After the group home residents had been in place for about a year, Pilgrim State wanted to open another home in Roslyn, and asked Ejnes to speak to the residents about how non-threatening the situation was, and how the residents were well supervised and accepted in the community. She had no qualms about encouraging another community to accept the group home.
Ejnes recalls, "There used to be this lady who lived there who would come over when we were outside and talk to [my daughter and me]. We were never afraid of her. That's the kind of people that they used to have living there. But now, I would be a little afraid to let one of them come into my driveway, that's how much the quality has changed.
"At the beginning," Ejnes continued, "they would have meetings once a month with us and the residents and the directors, but we don't do that anymore. I don't think they do a background check anymore like they promised us. I don't think they have enough people working there like they did in the beginning."
Even considering the murder at the neighboring group homes, Ejnes feels that the patients aren't to blame. "I don't have concerns when it comes to the patients, to be honest with you," Ejnes said. "They never gave us any problems. Whatever happened, it was always inside the house. But I am concerned about the lack of security or supervision, I should say.
"[Recently], I [saw] some of the patients wandering around, crying, fighting in the backyard, screaming, cursing," Ejnes said. "If I can hear it from my house with the windows closed, you're gonna tell me that the people who work there don't hear it?"
Ejnes' question, as well as others', will hopefully be answered at a meeting the West Hempstead Civic Association has requested with Pilgrim State officials.
Norton said, "We're calling a meeting with them to sit down and discuss with them why did it happen? Why did it fall through? Why aren't certain procedures ... being followed? Is this an appropriate setting for the people they've placed there? And what are they going to do in the future to build back the confidence that has been destroyed with what has happened?"
As Smith, who didn't receive bail at his Jan. 24 arraignment, sits in jail, Norton awaits a return call from Pilgrim State on the exclusive sit-down involving the residents of Garden Place, the directors of the facility and the WHCA.
As of Jan. 30, Pilgrim State had not returned the Herald's calls for comment.
Comments about this story? Ksalute@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 205.
