Just days before Christmas 2024, a group of female teen patients broke into the nurse’s station and medication room at a psychiatric hospital in Raleigh, where they tore down parts of the ceiling, hurled objects at staff, damaged equipment and used syringes as weapons. Several police officers responded to the disturbance at Holly Hill Hospital, and emergency responders took seven patients to the emergency room for monitoring due to possible medication ingestion.
According to a state report on the incident, staff members panicked and some huddled in the corner while an emergency code was called, which summoned more employees from other areas of Holly Hill’s campus in downtown Raleigh, near WakeMed Hospital off New Bern Avenue. Some patients got into the room where medications are stored, which had been propped open by nursing staff because some of them didn’t have a key to unlock it.
“Seemed like one thing after another, and it got out of control fast,” one hospital employee told state regulators who investigated the incident…