Re: Texas nurse facing murder charges has 'no recollection' of fiery LA crash, had 'mental collapse': motion

[Editor LA Times]

In article <unkudj$27j6q$8...@dont-email.me>
shithead <shit...@protonmail.com> wrote:
>
> No excuse. Lock this bitch up. Let the lesbians have her.
>

Lawyers for the Texas traveling nurse held behind bars on six
counts of murder for a fiery Los Angeles wreck earlier this
month appealed for her to be released for psychiatric testing,
alleging in a new motion that the woman suffered a mental
collapse and may have blacked out before the deadly wreck.

Nicole Linton, a traveling nurse from Texas, is facing murder
charges after allegedly barreling a Mercedes-Benz at 90 mph
through an intersection in Los Angeles’ Windsor Hills section on
Aug. 4, sparking a fiery crash that killed six, including a
pregnant woman, her unborn child, her boyfriend, and the woman’s
11-month-old infant son.

In a new motion filed Tuesday, Linton’s defense attorneys
describe how she suffered a mental collapse before the crash.
The filing also describes Linton’s deteriorating mental state
after a bipolar disorder diagnosis four years ago.

In the aftermath of the crash, Linton was treated at the Ronald
Reagan UCLA Medical Center by Dr. William Winter, who wrote in
an Aug. 6 evaluation that she experienced an "apparent lapse of
consciousness" leading up to the wreck captured on disturbing
surveillance video.

"She has no recollection of the events that led to her
collision," Winter wrote in the evaluation including among other
heavily redacted medical records attached to the motion. "The
next thing she recalled was lying on the pavement and seeing
that her car was on fire."

The motion says Linton’s family first became aware of her mental
health issues in May 2018. A letter from Linton’s sister,
Camille Linton, said that Nicole experienced her first mental
breakdown while studying to become a nursing anesthetist at the
University of Texas in Houston.

"The stress was too much for her and it ‘broke’ her," Camille
Linton wrote. "Thus beginning the journey of Nicole’s 4-year
struggle with mental illness."

At the time of the crash, Nicole Linton had been working for
West Los Angeles Medical Center. She had expressed to her sister
that her co-workers were "acting weird" toward her.

"In the days and hours leading up to the events of August 4,
Nicole’s behavior became increasingly frightening," the motion
says.

The day of the crash, Linton came home from the hospital for
lunch and FaceTimed her sister "completely naked," according to
court documents.

She went back to work before leaving again and called her sister
just minutes before the crash to say she was coming back to
Houston to visit her niece and that she would be getting married
soon.

While experiencing a panic attack in May 2018, Nicole Linton ran
out of her apartment, and when police approached, she jumped on
the hood of the cop car and was arrested for disorderly conduct,
the motion says. She called her family from the police station
stating concern for her pet turtle at home.

Days after that arrest, she confessed to her family that she
believed she was possessed by her dead grandmother. The motion
says that she visited Ben Taub psychiatric hospital the next day
and required stitches after banging her head into a glass
partition and complaining about police and the Supreme Court.
Records note she sang Bob Marley as the medical staff tended to
the bloody wound.

The motions say Linton was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at
Ben Taub and prescribed psychiatric medication. More than a year
later, a neighbor spotted Linton running around her apartment
complex naked and called the woman’s family. She at that point
was involuntarily committed.

She stopped taking her medication during the pandemic, and an
online therapist told her that she merely suffered from anxiety.
She also began not sleeping and accused her family of stealing
from her.

The motion says Linton – charged with six counts of murder and
five counts of manslaughter – should be released on no more than
$300,000 bail with ankle monitoring to undergo testing at UCLA
Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital.

But prosecutors with Los Angeles County District Attorney George
Gascón’s office have maintained that Linton, who has family in
Jamaica, is a flight risk and a danger to public safety in
requesting that she remain behind bars while awaiting trial.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-nurse-facing-murder-charges-no-
recollection-fiery-la-crash-mental-collapse-motion