SOUTHWICK — The owners of two homes appeared at the Select Board meeting Monday asking for help to find a solution on how to protect themselves from a resident of a group home on Klaus Anderson Road who has been escaping and putting their families in fear.
“It’s not that he’s leaving the home,” said Jake Thibault, one of the homeowners who spoke about their experience over the last 10 months. “It’s that when he does there’s a real and imminent threat to the community.”
Thibault said incidents involving the man, who is unidentified, started about 10 months ago and has occurred on three separate occasions.
The man lives in a group home directly across the street from Thibault and Darcie Rock.
During the first one, he said, the man “walked directly into our house” without knocking or announcing himself.
“He only left after my dogs chased him out,” Thibault said.
The police were called but “no meaningful action was taken action to prevent this happening again,” he said.
Several months later, at 4:45 a.m., the man tried to get into the house through the front door, he said.
The last time was a couple of weeks ago on a “cold, rainy night” where the man, barefoot and without a jacket, “aggressively tried to open my front door,” Thibault said.
He said after the second incident, the staff at the group home told him that systems had been put in place to ensure the man could longer leave the home unsupervised.
“Even with the plan in place, he was still able to leave the home unnoticed by staff and return to my home,” he said.
The man has been described by the police, Thibault said, as having violent tendencies, and breaking windows and damaging the inside of homes.
“And from what I understand the staff cannot control him when it escalates,” he said.
“That level of volatility adds an even greater layer of danger to an already alarming situation,” he added.
He said the staff at the group home has shown it cannot guarantee the safety of its residents or the surrounding community.
“At an absolute minimum, he needs to be rehomed to a facility that can provide the services and care he clearly requires,” Thibault said.
Rock said she had “multiple encounters” with the man where he had walked into her garage and “was coming” at me in my driveway.
On one occasion, she said the staff of the home chased the man down and wrestled him to the ground.
Rock added that another resident has also gotten out of the home several times while unsupervised.
She said when she approached the staff about trying to get the man under control, “they jeered at me… and told me to shut the [expletive] up.”
“It’s an extremely dangerous situation,” Rock said, adding that she carries a firearm.
“It needs to stop … because something bad is going to happen,” she said.
Thibault asked the Select Board to formally request a state investigation into the home, press for emergency intervention to protect the residents and the neighbors, investigate and confirm the current licensing and operational status of the home, and provide a written response outlining the specific actions the town intends to take.
Select Board member Diane Gale said she was “shocked” when she read Thibault’s letter.
“It’s chilling,” she said.
Gale said action would be taken but there was nothing the town could do that, but they would do what they could.
The name of the group home and whether its existence is known by state agencies is something of a mystery.
Reminder Publishing contacted officials with the state’s Department of Mental Health, which has a satellite office in Springfield.
An official there said there was no record of a group home operating on Klaus Anderson Road.
However, the official said a staff member that works at a satellite office in Westfield had forwarded the YouTube link of the meeting on Tuesday, and was “already aware of the situation.”
There was no record of a group home operating in multiple documents on the website of the state’s Department of Public Health.
The town building inspector didn’t know about the home, nor did the Board of Health’s director.
The town clerk said there was no business certificate listed for the home.
According to the town’s GIS site, the house is owned by Wasserman Holdings LLC, and its agent, according to state corporate filings, is Adam Wasserman, who has an address in New Jersey. Attempts to contact him were unsuccessful.
The house was purchased by the holding company in 2013, according to the Registry of Deeds.
Reminder Publishing previously published a story about neighbors’ concerns regarding a female resident of the home in March 2014.
According to the story, the home was leased to Becket Family of Services at the time. Calls to various Becket offices found on its website were not returned.
On the Becket Family of Services website there is no information that it operates a group home in Massachusetts. There are, however, three group homes listed on the website. All are in Maine.
