The Story
This is not based on a true
story, it is a true story.
The Pastor stood before the
congregation. Tears welled up in his eyes and ran down his cheeks as he told
the tale of his youth. He told them that
when he was a young man, the ambulance drivers came to get him to take him to
the mental ward at the local hospital.
The ambulance drivers put him
in a straightjacket, and before they got him into the ambulance one of them hit
him in the face. It was very dramatic.
It was painful to listen to. Those
who listened were in tears as they heard how this man of God had been abused.
But soon, the tears turned to
shouts of joy as he told how God had come to him, taken him out of that pit and
anointed him to preach the gospel. It
was extremely emotional, and heart wrenching.
As I listened, a voice within
me said, “Something is wrong here!”
Later, I asked a Paramedic
how many mental patients they transported in straightjackets each year.
The answer surprised me.
In the state where the
incident happened the
In fact, the Paramedic told
me the process that is followed to give any person a mental evaluation.
The process: Somebody had to
go before a judge, and gets legal papers signed by the judge to have any person
receive a mental evaluation. Those papers were then given to the local Sheriff
who sent his deputies, in marked Sheriff’s cruisers, to escort that person the
local hospital for a mental evaluation.
Just to be sure of the truth,
I called a person who had been an ambulance driver many years ago, even before
the current
I asked the same question and
received the same answer. In his years
as an ambulance driver, he had never been sent to bring a mental patient to a
hospital and the ambulance service in the “old” days did not transport mental
patients. That was the Sheriff’s duty.
It became clear! The incident could not have happened!
The story was just a story.