After a court hearing examining county inmate Trishawn Carey's extensive medical and mental health history, a judge last month ordered her released to the care of a South Los Angeles residential treatment program for women just out of jail or prison.
Two days later, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department dropped the homeless woman at the emergency room entrance of the county hospital. She ended up on skid row, where supporters found her five hours later at the scene of her March 1 arrest, without any medication.
Carey faces life in prison on a charge of assaulting an officer for raising a nightstick during the fatal police shooting of Charly Keunang, another skid row ex-convict with a history of mental illness.