As Carla Koplein listened to the staccato chatter on the police scanner, at an hour when almost everyone in Baker City is deep in sleep, she wondered if her son, Raleigh David Rust, was involved.

She worried that he was.

The list of people likely to be the subject of a 911 call about someone wailing near Second Street and Court Avenue at 2:28 a.m. was surely not a lengthy one.

Yet as Koplein listened on the early morning of May 14, 2021, she had no trouble imagining that the police officers and the dispatcher were talking about Raleigh, 46, although the initial report speculated that the wailing person was younger.

She knew her son, one of her four children, was mentally ill.

He was also kind and intelligent and generous.

But Raleigh’s mental health struggles had been a frequent challenge for Koplein.

She had tried for several months to have Raleigh civilly committed to the Oregon State Hospital for treatment. Just three months earlier he spent a week or so at a psychiatric hospital in Twin Falls, Idaho, where she said he was diagnosed with biopolar disorder with schizophrenic tendencies.

But Raleigh underwent that treatment voluntarily.

He didn’t stay.

Koplein feared that her son would soon be dead if he remained free, neither in treatment nor in the Baker County Jail, where he had been incarcerated multiple times for short periods over the past several months, for charges including burglary and criminal trespassing.

“I was so worried about Raleigh,” Koplein said in a recent interview. “I would rather my son was in jail or prison and not out on the street in the middle of the night.”

And so she listened to the scanner, and not just in the predawn hours of that May day.

She listened obsessively. And always with trepidation.

Indeed, she heard every minute of the 20-minute episode that started with that 911 call on May 14, 2021.

She heard Baker City Police officers Mark Powell and Rand Weaver talking with a dispatcher as they checked the report of the wailing person. Around 2:47 a.m. they saw a man running east through the parking lot at the Chevron station at Main Street and Auburn Avenue.

It was Raleigh.

Months later, Koplein would watch a surveillance video from the station showing Raleigh, for a couple tantalizing seconds, running past the fuel pumps, followed first by Powell in his patrol car and then by Weaver in his.

She initially requested the video from the Baker City Police Department, but was refused. Koplein said the Baker County Sheriff’s Office hand-delivered a copy of the video to her on Nov. 4, 2021.

That was one of several complaints Koplein has about how Baker City Police handled the incident and her subsequent requests for information.

In the video, Raleigh is running east toward the Baker City Police Department and the Leo Adler Memorial Parkway.

He was also running toward the Powder River, just a block or so away and running high and swift to satiate farmers and ranchers dealing with severe drought.

The Powder’s flow, augmented with water released from Phillips Reservoir, had risen in the previous week or so from 150 cubic feet per second (cfs) to about 370.

Koplein didn’t know, as she sat beside her scanner, that she was listening to the final minutes of her son’s life.

She couldn’t know that 18 days later, an irrigation district official would find Raleigh’s body wedged against a diversion dam more than a mile and a half downriver, about three-quarters of a mile north of Hughes Lane.

The medical examination, and a mother’s concerns

Dr. Clifford Nelson, the pathologist from Clackamas who did an external examination of Raleigh’s body but did not perform an autopsy, determined that Raleigh accidentally drowned.

The doctor found no signs of trauma.

A sample of Raleigh’s blood contained methamphetamine and amphetamine, and Nelson’s report lists one item — “methamphetamine intoxication” — under “other significant conditions.”

Koplein said she talked by phone with Nelson in late December 2021. She said the doctor told her Raleigh had taken meth less than one hour before he died, but that the amount was not enough to cause an overdose.

Koplein doesn’t know how her son ended up in the cold, swift water on a night when the air temperature dipped to about 40 degrees.

She suspects she might always wonder.

Dr. Derek Zickgraf, a Baker County medical examiner who examined Raleigh’s body before it was taken to Clackamas, where Nelson did his examination, wrote in his report that when Raleigh’s body was recovered, his jeans were down, bunched around his ankles.

“Possibly he was urinating in the river when he fell forward and was unable to self extricate leading to drowning,” Zickgraf wrote.

That’s possible, Koplein concedes.

But she criticizes Weaver and Powell for what she considers their negligence, in failing to confirm where Raleigh had gone after he ran from the brightly illuminated gas station into the darkness beyond.

“I’m not saying Raleigh would be alive today if they had done their jobs properly,” Koplein said. “But they didn’t take it far enough.”

She wonders whether her son was in fact heading to the Baker City Police Department, which is just a block east of the gas station, at 1768 Auburn Ave.

When she met with Weaver, Powell and Baker City Police Chief Ty Duby in 2021, Koplein said she asked the officers why they hadn’t used their authority to have Raleigh incarcerated temporarily due to his mental health problems, rather than pursuing him in their patrol cars but not following through to see if he was all right.

“I told them, you were sloppy,” Koplein said.

Koplein points out that the police officers didn’t find Raleigh’s cellphone, which was beside the Adler Parkway, near the edge of the bank leading the river.

A man walking his dog on the Parkway later told Koplein he found Raleigh’s phone about 3 a.m., just 13 minutes or so after Raleigh ran past the gas station.

Raleigh’s second encounter with police

Koplein notes that a little more than five hours before Raleigh ran through the gas station parking lot, Weaver gave him a citation for trespassing at the Eldorado Inn motel on Campbell Street near the freeway.

That incident started at 9:22 p.m. on May 13, 2021, and ended just before 10 p.m. Much of it is on a video from Weaver’s body cam. Koplein obtained the video on July 8, 2021.

She also listened to that episode on her scanner as it happened. She heard Raleigh’s name.

During his conversation with Weaver, Raleigh appears to be mimicking firing a gun in a direction away from Weaver.

Koplein said it is clear to her that Raleigh was hallucinating, possibly the result of anti-depression drugs he had been prescribed at New Directions Northwest in Baker City.

“The police should have called mental health, the way he was acting at the motel,” she said.

Koplein said Raleigh’s sister had a short conversation with him the afternoon of May 13, several hours before the incident at the motel, and that he was acting “psychotic.” He told his sister that he was taking only prescription drugs.

Koplein notes that due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Baker County Jail was limiting the number of inmates in custody. She believes Raleigh went back to the Eldorado, after the employee told him to leave, because he wanted to go to jail.

Raleigh tells Weaver, during the incident at the motel, “I trespassed back on the property, I probably should go to jail.”

Weaver, while talking on the phone to the manager of the motel, refers to “restrictions, and what not” at the jail due to the pandemic.

But due in part to the restrictions, Raleigh stayed on the street.

Weaver did tell Raleigh that he might end up going to jail if he continued to trespass.

Koplein later obtained a copy of Raleigh’s prescription records from Albertsons. The sheet showed that he had filled a prescription for one antidepression medication, traces of which were found in Raleigh’s blood after his death, on May 12, 2021.

The records showed that Raleigh had filled prescriptions for seven separate medications since Feb. 26, 2021, after he returned from the psychiatric hospital in Idaho.

Among the prescriptions that Raleigh had filled are:

• buproprion, an antidepressant and smoking cessation aid.

• clonidine, a sedative also used to treat high blood pressure.

• desvenlaxafine, an antidepressant.

• quetiapine, an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression.

“You would think that someone actively taking this cocktail of drugs would be monitored in a mental hospital,” Koplein said.

As Weaver handed the citation to Raleigh outside the motel, just before 10 p.m. on May 13, 2021, the officer reminded Raleigh that his court date was June 9.

“He wouldn’t ever make that appearance,” Koplein said.

Weaver says, “Good luck, Raleigh.”

Koplein noted that Weaver didn’t use the more formal “Mr. Rust” in addressing her son, a reflection of how frequently police talked with Raleigh, and how familiar officers were with him.

Raleigh, as he walks away from the motel, hits his head on a metal and concrete staircase.

Weaver cautions Raleigh to be careful.

Five hours later Raleigh was in the Powder River.

A fruitless

search

Later that morning, Koplein was up at daylight to start searching for her son.

She never considered that he might have been in the river.

And although she was, as always, worried about Raleigh, she also didn’t seriously ponder the possibility that he was dead.

She went to a storage unit that she had rented for Raleigh after she evicted him from her home that winter.

She left cigarettes and a $5 bill.

She kept searching.

“I looked in places that he previously told me homeless people slept,” Koplein wrote in a detailed timeline she assembled. “I looked at the motels where he had been staying at. Nothing, not even a clue. It never crossed my mind that he would be dead. I just knew that he desperately needed help, as I heard it all play out on the scanner.”

Two days later, on May 17, 2021, Koplein had to fly to Arizona to help her sister, who was having surgery.

While she was out of state she called Raleigh’s cellphone repeatedly, as did many friends and relatives. She also phoned his probation officer multiple times.

On May 21, 2021, a week after Raleigh went missing, an employee from the Baker Truck Corral called Baker City Police to say the business had been holding some of Raleigh’s possessions since May 13. These included a backpack with clothing, a laptop computer, a GoPro camera, his empty wallet and debit cards.

Koplein said Raleigh’s probation officer told her on the morning of May 25, 2021, that Raleigh’s possessions were at the Truck Corral.

A few minutes later she called Baker City Police to file a missing person report.

Police pinged Raleigh’s cell phone and, according to Koplein’s timeline, it was active.

Less than a week later, on the morning of June 1, 2021, the irrigation district worker found Raleigh’s body.

On June 10, Koplein learned that a woman had Raleigh’s cellphone, and that the man who found it along the Adler Parkway had given it to her.

The man, who Koplein said died of an overdose of pain medication in August 2021, took her and her oldest son, Brian, Raleigh’s brother, to the place where he found Raleigh’s phones. The site is between Bridge Street and Auburn Avenue, less than half a block south of the Baker City Police Department, at 1768 Auburn Ave.

The man told Koplein that the two phones were stacked beside a tree, just off the east (river) side of the Parkway.

Koplein later placed a memorial to Raleigh at the spot.

The woman actually had two phones, and although Koplein believed Raleigh had only one phone, the woman insisted that both belonged to Raleigh.

Koplein still has the phone she knew to be Raleigh’s.

“I use it,” she said.

Questions unanswered

Although Koplein said she has no definitive evidence that someone killed her son, whether accidentally or intentionally, she remains plagued by apparent inconsistencies that to her suggest the possibility of foul play.

During the incident on May 13, 2021, when Weaver cited Raleigh for trespassing at the Eldorado Motel, Koplein said the body cam video shows Raleigh placing his ID card into his wallet, which was attached to a metal chain on his jeans.

The chain was still clipped onto his pants when his body was found.

But the wallet, with debit cards in it, was at the Truck Corral.

“The police never asked me if they could look at those things,” Koplein said.

One of the debit cards looked as though it had been run through a machine so many times that the security chip was damaged, she said.

She checked, after Raleigh’s body was found, and learned that the account for that card had money.

Koplein wonders too about the two phones, one atop the other, beside the Parkway. If the man’s story is true, it suggests someone carefully set the phones there.

Koplein calls the Baker City Police investigation into Raleigh’s disappearance a “farce.”

“The police should have gone through their own logs, and did a paper search, as soon as Raleigh was reported missing,” she said. “I did it, why couldn’t they?”

Koplein said an X-ray of Raleigh’s body showed another metal clip in the area of his pant pocket, but she said police told her his pockets were empty.

Although the police department posted an announcement on its Facebook page that Raleigh was missing, Koplein believes police could have been more aggressive, not only in the week between when she reported him missing and when his body was found, but before.

“They should have started looking for videos of Raleigh at the truck stop, the minute they got the call that Raleigh’s stuff had been left there, I think May 21,” she said. “It seems to me that as soon as the body was found and processed, the investigation was over.”

Mentally ill but intelligent, kind and musical

Koplein doesn’t blanch at using the word “crazy” to describe Raleigh.

But she also emphasizes his positive qualities.

And occasionally she resorts, with no apparent recognition that’s she doing so, to present tense.

“Raleigh was a good person,” she said. “Raleigh was a hard worker. He’s very intelligent. He’s a charmer. He would say crazy things but he was so smart they would sound legitimate.”

But his mental health issues were glaring, Koplein said.

He would insist that his father, who lives in Burns, was dead.

When Koplein would tell Raleigh that wasn’t true, and even suggest that Raleigh call his father on the phone and hear for himself, Raleigh still didn’t believe her.

He also claimed that his father had bought him the house that’s across the street from Koplein’s home.

Raleigh moved to Baker City on June 1, 2019, from Burns, where he had been living with his father.

He lived in Las Vegas with a girlfriend from September 2019 until June 1, 2020, when he returned to Baker City, again living in Koplein’s home.

On the evening of Aug. 10, 2020, Raleigh was taken by Baker City ambulance to Saint Alphonsus Medical Center in Baker City on what’s known as a police officer “mental health hold.”

This incident also involved the Powder River, although Koplein will never know whether this was mere coincidence.

Raleigh apparently had been jumping into the river near the D Street bridge, then climbing back out, she said.

Koplein said medical records from the emergency room after that incident showed that Raleigh had marijuana in his system, and that his blood alcohol level was .24, which is three times the legal limit to drive in Oregon.

According to the records, Raleigh asked police “to shoot him.”

Paramedics administered ketamine, a sedative, to Raleigh because he was “combative,” according to the records.

He was sedated when he arrived at the emergency room but “soon became rather combative here again.”

Doctors gave Raleigh 10 milligrams of Haldol, an antipsychotic, by IV.

Koplein requested a copy of the body camera footage from police officers who responded to the Aug. 10, 2020, incident, citing the Oregon Public Records Law.

Duby, the city police chief, denied her request in a Dec. 15, 2021, letter because the footage included “potentially protected medical information.” He wrote, among other things, that “without Mr. Rust’s consent, any information concerning the protected medical nature of this call is protected from disclosure.”

Yet Raleigh had been dead for seven months, and could hardly give his consent.

Koplein also already had copies of her son’s medical records.

Periods of normal behavior

Between the frequent episodes when Raleigh’s behavior confused and frightened her, Koplein said he could act like a normal, loving son and father to his four children.

She said Raleigh’s two oldest sons are both adults.

He and his wife, who separated but never divorced, have a daughter who is 18, and he has another daughter, by a different mother, who is 7.

Koplein said that although Raleigh was not always able to pay all the child support her owed, she said he had, not long before he died, started chipping away at his obligations. After he died she found among his possessions two receipts for money orders, dated April 8, 2021, one for $300 and one for $500, that were made out to two of the women with which he had children.

“Does this tell me that Raleigh was trying to get right with the world and live a good life, or does it tell me he was going to get right with the world and kill himself?” Koplein said. “I truly think that Raleigh was consciously trying to do the right thing and wanted to live a good life.”

He was a musician who played in a rock band when he was younger and particularly enjoyed piano and keyboards.

In 2020 he sent her a recording he had made.

“Hi, mom,” Raleigh said. “I just wanted to send you a recording because I know I’m a jerk on the phone, and I love you and thank you so much for all you do. I just wanted to play the piano for you.”

Raleigh played for a couple minutes, including a passage from Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”

“Sorry, I’m a little frazzled after our phone call,” Raleigh said in concluding the recording. “Not my best pianoing, but I’ll be recording some things for you.”

Police were called to Koplein’s home on Dec. 1, 2020, Jan. 30, 2021, and Jan. 31, 2021.

In the December incident, Koplein said, “Raleigh was clearly very psychotic that morning, talking to people who were not there, hallucinating.”

Baker City Police arrested Raleigh on Feb. 6, 2021, for first-degree burglary and second-degree criminal mischief. Police found him inside an empty home that was for sale, near his mother’s home. The charges were still pending when Raleigh went missing on May 14.

On Feb. 11, 2021, Koplein and her brother filed to have Raleigh civilly committed for mental health treatment.

“Every time I called the police to the house, because Raleigh was out of control, and we felt threatened, I was told by police that there is nothing they can do because it is not against the law to be crazy, and that I should file a restraining order,” Koplein said.

Eight days later, on Feb. 19, 2021, Raleigh voluntarily checked into the psychiatric hospital in Idaho.

Koplein said her civil commitment request was denied by a New Directions Northwest employee later in February 2021. The employee wrote in a court document, which Circuit Court Judge Matt Shirtcliff signed on Feb. 25, 2021, that Raleigh “does have a mental disorder but that he is not dangerous to himself or others, and that he is able to provide for his basic needs. Furthermore, he has reported a willingness to participate in outpatient treatment services for mental health and substance abuse.”

But that treatment never happened, Koplein said.

Marji Lind, clinical director at New Directions, said that although she can’t comment specifically about Raleigh or anyone else, the civil commitment process has a “very high threshold” to convince a circuit court judge, who ultimately decides whether to compel someone to be confined at the Oregon State Hospital.

The judge must conclude, at the time of a court hearing, that the person is either an imminent danger to himself or herself, or to others, Lind said.

She said it’s very common, in her experience, for relatives to believe a person should be civilly committed even though the person’s actions don’t meet that legal requirement involving a danger to himself or to others.

Lind also said that counselors and others who work with mentally ill people are occasionally frustrated by Oregon’s civil commitment law, because they believe that people who could benefit greatly from mandatory treatment don’t have that chance because they aren’t civilly committed.

Shari Selander, New Directions CEO, said the organization always encourages people to seek treatment, but she noted that except in civil commitments, such treatment isn’t compulsory.

Restraining order

On March 1, 2021, Koplein, having been unsuccessful at having Raleigh civilly committed, took out a restraining order on her son.

When a sheriff’s deputy gave Raleigh the order, at Koplein’s home, he told the deputy that his name was Trinity and that he owned the home. When the deputy asked Raleigh whether he understood the document, Raleigh said he did because he was a paralegal.

The next day, March 2, 2021, police arrested Raleigh after he kicked open the front door of Koplein’s home and then the door leading to her bedroom, where she had sheltered out of fear.

She said he didn’t harm her, although he threw a dishcloth at her. He was yelling “where’s my cat?” repeatedly.

Koplein called 911.

“It hurts to watch your child, who you know loves you very much, to act so crazy,” she said. “It is shocking.”

Raleigh spent a little more than a month in the Baker County Jail. He was released April 7, 2021.

Raleigh was arrested again on April 14, 2021, for violating the restraining order. He was taken to the Baker County Jail, where he remained until April 29.

He was arrested on May 6 for probation violation, and released on May 10.

Koplein has a video showing Raleigh on May 12, two days before he died, at the storage unit she had rented for him. He is on the video for 22 minutes, from 4:26 p.m. to 4:48 p.m.

“He looks very confused,” Koplein said. “He is talking to the security camera.”

On the video Raleigh displays what looks to Koplein like a “fist bump” gesture.

“He appeared to be so confused at one point, shrugging his shoulders with his hands out to his sides, looking up at the camera, halfway through the video at the storage sheds,” Koplein said. “It looked like he mouthed the word ‘mom.’ You know, like what happened? What am I supposed to do? Or what did I do wrong?”

Police perspective

Baker City Police Chief Ty Duby, and Officer Rand Weaver — Weaver is one of the two officers who saw Raleigh just before he ended up the river — both said police officers are limited in what they can do with people like Raleigh who struggle with mental health problems.

“Our hands are pretty much tied,” Duby said.

Weaver said he and other officers can detain a person, and bring them to the hospital, on what’s known as a “mental health hold” or “police officers hold,” but generally only in cases when the officer believes the person is a danger to himself or to others.

That’s what happened with Raleigh when he was jumping in the Powder River near D Street in August 2020.

The Oregon Administrative Rule that deals with mental health holds — OAR 309-033-0230 — states that a police officer can detain a person when the officer “has probable cause to believe that the person is dangerous to self or others, and is in need of immediate care, custody or treatment for a mental illness.”

Weaver said he sometimes asks people if they are suicidal.

If a person answers no, and Weaver can’t otherwise “articulate the danger,” that the person poses to himself or to others, then there is no legal authority for the officer to detain the person, he said.

Weaver said he had spoken with Raleigh several times before the night of May 13, 2021, when he issued Raleigh the citation for trespassing at the motel.

Weaver said that although “it was apparent he had mental issues,” Raleigh never said directly, or gave the impression, that he intended to harm himself or anyone else.

Weaver said he called officials from New Directions Northwest, the county’s mental health provider, to talk with Raleigh on some occasions.

But Weaver noted that Raleigh, and others, can’t be compelled to talk with counselors.

Both Weaver and Duby said it is frustrating to respond to multiple calls from the public about a person such as Raleigh and not be able to get any help for the person.

But they noted that acting strangely, including talking to yourself or gesticulating, as Koplein said Raleigh sometimes did, is not only insufficient reason for a mental health hold, but it’s also not illegal.

Weaver said the initial 911 call early on the morning of May 14, 2021, was about a person, possibly a female or juvenile, who was wailing.

Weaver said he had no reason to think Raleigh was involved.

However, while checking on the 911 call, and driving in the alley between First and Main streets downtown, he saw Raleigh running by.

Weaver said Powell had also seen Raleigh running through the Chevron parking lot, heading east toward the river.

In a recording of police conversations during the incident, Powell says he saw Raleigh Rust, although he also refers to him as a juvenile.

Weaver said he left the alley at Auburn Avenue, and turned east, driving toward Resort Street.

Weaver said he had no reason to connect Raleigh to the 911 call, and that neither he nor Powell was chasing Raleigh.

“There was no reason to stop or detain Raleigh, unless he wanted to talk to us,” Weaver said. “The last we saw he was running down the street.”

Duby said he understands that Koplein blames Weaver and Powell for failing to follow up, to make a more concerted effort to talk with Raleigh and make sure he was not in danger.

“We explained to her that there’s not a lot we can do (in the circumstances of May 14, 2021),” Duby said. “We wish there was.”

The police officers and Koplein agree on one point — that Raleigh ought not have been out on the streets in the middle of the night.

But Koplein has a decidedly different opinion about the obligation police officers had in those few minutes between when Raleigh passed in front of the security camera at the Chevron station, and when he was in the river — particularly because Raleigh, who was homeless, didn’t have any place to go.

Koplein thinks the officers were negligent, and that they might have seen Raleigh, or at least have found his phone beside the Parkway, had they walked the stretch of path between Bridge Street and Auburn Avenue.

“They didn’t ask Raleigh if he was OK,” she said. “How would you feel about being chased around town for several blocks without a drop of water to quench your dried lips and parched throat? Maybe he would be so very tired while attempting to bend over the edge of the river bank to quench your thirst, that he lost his balance and fell in. He was bone tired while he was running. You can see that in the video. Maybe he threw himself down in the nearest grassy spot, and rolled over the edge accidentally.”

Yet even as she ponders these unknowable scenes, Koplein’s thoughts return to the two stacked cellphones. That doesn’t support the theory of Raleigh flopping down and falling down the riverbank.

Duby said Baker City Police investigated after Raleigh’s body was found on June 1, 2021.

“There was nothing to indicate foul play,” Duby said.

Lingering questions

Koplein has copies of several incident reports, most written by Baker City Police Detective Shannon Regan. Some dated to late May 2021, while Raleigh was still missing, and others in early June 2021, just after his body was found.

In one report, written by Officer Mark Powell on June 6, 2021, he writes that sometime the previous night someone had left a note on the front window of a police car while it was parked on the north side of the police department. The note listed a name, claiming the person was responsible for selling heroin and meth in Baker City and “he also did in Raleigh Rust.”

The next day, June 7, 2021, Regan wrote a report that video camera footage showed that a male left the note. The report includes the name of a person who might have placed the note.

In a June 16, 2021, report, Regan wrote that she and Detective Chris Sells talked to the male on June 10, and he admitted he had left the letter on the police car.

He told the detectives he “had no factual knowledge or basis for saying someone had caused Raleigh’s death.” The man said he was mad at the person whose name he wrote on the note, implicating that person in Raleigh’s death.

Still, Koplein wonders whether the man the detectives interviewed actually did have legitimate information about a possible suspect in Raleigh’s death.

Later, Koplein exchanged a series of online messages with the man who left the note on the police car.

Although the man told Koplein he didn’t have any specific information, he wrote that he had heard “about some deal I think went bad with your son” and the man whose name was on the note left on the police car.

Too many cracks to fall through

Koplein has a three-ring binder crammed with records.

Police reports.

Timelines of Raleigh’s movements, actions, arrests.

She also has dozens of photos.

Raleigh as a little boy.

Raleigh playing in a rock band.

Raleigh pushing a kid in a swing at the park.

And she still has his phone.

But she also has questions — questions she fears won’t ever be answered.

And regrets.

She wonders whether she could have done something different, whether anyone could have, to prevent her son from ending up in the swollen Powder River on that chilly May morning.

Ultimately, Koplein laments that Raleigh died before he could conquer the mental health and drug use issues that had plagued him for so long.

“Every crack you can think of, he went through it,” she said. “I knew he was going to die if he wasn’t detained in some manner. Of course I didn’t want to see him locked up, but I felt that he would have a chance to get the counseling, and proper medication, and to be observed by professionals who could help him mentally, and maybe even spiritually.

“The system fails.”

“Every crack you can think of, he went through it. I knew he was going to die if he wasn’t detained in some manner. Of course I didn’t want to see him locked up, but I felt that he would have a chance to get the counseling, and proper medication, and to be observed by professionals who could help him mentally, and maybe even spiritually. The system fails.”

— Carla Koplein, whose son, Raleigh Rust, 46, drowned in the Powder River in May 2021