LEOMINSTER — On Tuesday, April 2, 2024, at about 7:25 p.m., Leominster Police Officers Caulin Salvi, Brandon Carlson, and Shane Crawford were among several police units dispatched to UMass Memorial HealthAlliance’s Leominster hospital campus on 60 Hospital Road following a report that a patient had escaped from the mental health ward.
While enroute, dispatch advised police that Amber Thayer, who had been involuntarily committed to the hospital under Section 12, had broken items in the emergency room prior to escaping from the hospital through entrance B.
(The account and quotations in this article were sourced from the printed Personnel Narratives of Officers Salvi, Carlson, and Crawford, and do not reflect any political perspective or personal opinion of News Link Live, which is strictly a business entity.)
“Officer Crawford advised responding units that Amber is violent and often requires three units to safely deal with,” Officer Salvi said. “Please note, Amber is a biological male and identifies as a female.” (The pronouns used for Thayer in this article are she/her).
According to police, Amber E. Thayer, 35, is a resident of 30 Arlington Street in Fitchburg.
Officers Brandon Carlson and Crawford arrived at the hospital before Officer Crawford and located Thayer at the top of the parking garage, sitting on a concrete ledge talking to Mariah Crowley, a nurse at the hospital.
When Thayer saw Officer Carlson, she got upset and placed both legs over the ledge while stating that the police were going to arrest her.
“Due to Amber being upset, I stood at my cruiser approximately 20 feet away,” Officer Carlson said. “I also requested other officers respond without lights or sirens to not make Amber anymore upset.”
At this point, Thayer was hanging from the ledge by her hands. The nurse continued speaking with her in an attempt to get her to pull herself back on top of the ledge.
“Amber would turn and speak with Mariah,” Officer Carlson said. “Amber had both legs over the ledge and was holding onto the concrete, only using her arms to hold herself up.”
Thayer pulled herself up, with one leg almost on the ground and the other resting on top of the ledge. She then said she couldn’t breathe and began to hyperventilate. Thayer began to fall backward off the ledge, which is approximately a 24-foot drop to a concrete level of the parking garage. As she fell, Crowley grabbed her left leg, leaving Thayer dangling headfirst.
Officer Crawford and Carlson ran over to the ledge with a group of other responding officers and hospital personnel. Officer Crawford grabbed Thayer’s right leg, while Officer Crawford and Crowley had Thayer’s right leg.
“With the help of hospital security and other officers, we were able to pull Amber back over the ledge and onto the ground of the parking garage,” Officer Carlson said. “Once Amber was laying on the ground, she began to have a seizure. Mariah stated that Amber has a seizure disorder, and everything will be medically fine. Amber was helped up and walked back into the hospital.”
According to Officer Salvi, hospital staff “claimed” they could not bring a stretcher out into the parking lot to take Thayer inside. Leominster fire fighters and hospital security guards then escorted Thayer to the lobby of the emergency room where she was placed in soft restraints on a stretcher and sedated with 300 mg of ketamine.
After Thayer was in the “custody and care of the hospital” Officer Salvi began his investigation by inspecting the damage Thayer reportedly caused to a door in the emergency room and questioning staff.
“I inspected the door that was reportedly ‘destroyed’ and saw that the small four inch by 24-inch window pane was removed from the door,” Officer Salvi said. “The window was secured using thin, 34-inch half round molding with thin Brad Nails. I could not see any glue residue in the window and it appeared to have been popped clean out to allow Amber to reach through the gap and open the secure mental health ward door from the outside. There was no other damage to the door.”
Officer Salvi then spoke with the nurse who was assigned to Thayer. She said that earlier that evening Thayer was speaking with a representative from Community Health Link, which is UMass Memorial Health’s “Community Behavioral Health Center” for the northern and central regions of Worcester County.
“When [the representative] told Amber that Community Healthlink was extending Amber’s section 12, Amber began losing control and started the outburst,” Officer Salvi recounted. “[The nurse] told me that Amber made it through the secure door and went straight outside. Based on my experience with this section of the hospital it was apparent to me that the security response would not have had time to get to the door and get control of Amber as this door specifically is not manned but alarmed. A security guard is on hand but would have been behind Amber at the main entrance to the mental health ward.”
When the ketamine wore off, Thayer was arrested for destruction of property/vandalism for damaging the window in the emergency room hospital’s door.
Thayer’s bail was set at $540 and police filed a Section 18, which requires the hospitalization of mentally ill prisoners at Bridgewater State Hospital.
Thayer was arraigned in Leominster District Court on April 3, 2024.
She attended a pretrial hearing on May 23, 2024, which was continued to May 24, 2024.
Disclaimer: If you are wondering why the incident in this story was from April, that’s because I had to file FOIA request(s) to get the court documents for the incident. FOIAs are time consuming.
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