Teen charged in slaying of parents asks to be put on suicide watch

By BETH VELLIQUETTE : The Herald-Sun
bvelliquette@heraldsun.com
Sep 13, 2005 : 9:13 pm ET

HILLSBOROUGH -- Adam Sapikowski, the former Durham Academy student charged with the first-degree murder of his parents, has told his jailers that he is suicidal and needs help.

"I am having trouble with self injurious behavior," he wrote on an inmate grievance/request form at the Orange County Jail. "My request is to be placed on some kind of suicide watch or something. I am having to [sic] much trouble handling it and I don't want to end in doing something crazy/stupid. Please help me with this."

Sapikowski, 17, is being held in the Orange County Jail awaiting trial for two counts of first-degree murder. He is accused of killing his father, James Sapikowski, 52, and his mother, Alison Sapikowski, 49, by shooting them around April 28.

After a relative called police and asked them to check on the couple, police found their bodies in their home near the Chapel Hill Country Club on May 14.

When questioned by police, Adam Sapikowski told them that he killed his parents. His attorney, Orange-Chatham Public Defender James Williams, said the killings were committed under extreme provocation with its roots in both physical and emotional abuse.

Upon receiving the note from Sapikowski, Maj. Billy Dunnegan of the Orange County Sheriff's Office brought the information to Chief District Court Judge Joe Buckner and asked that Buckner sign a safekeeping order for Sapikowski.

A safekeeping order is a request from a county jail to the state Department of Correction to place someone in a state prison where the person can receive treatment and care for medical, mental health and emotional problems or severe behavioral problems, Buckner said.

Signing a safekeeping order is a fairly routine event and occurs on an average of about once per week, he said. It is standard procedure for youths who are the subject of a safekeeping order to be sent to Western Youth Institution in Morganton, he said.

Buckner signed the order transferring Adam Sapikowski to Western. But after he signed it, Williams called him and asked if the order could be put on hold for a day because he had already requested a placement hearing for 10 a.m. today at the Orange County Courthouse.

Williams did not return a call asking for information about his request for a hearing, but it's a possibility that he'll ask a judge to order that Adam Sapikowski be transferred to a hospital facility for treatment rather than Western Youth Institution, which is a prison facility for male youth ages 13 to 22.

Western, a high-rise facility, houses close, medium and minimum custody inmates, according to its Web site. Inmates are housed in 460 cells on the upper level floors. The 15th floor includes a 10-bed infirmary, dental and mental health treatment offices.

In Buckner's order, he wrote that Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass said Sapikowski has been under constant watch for the past 24 hours because of the note he wrote asking for help. Medical personnel also stated that Sapikowski needs more medical attention that what is available at the Orange County Jail, the order states.

However, some jails do not have the resources to monitor someone for 24 hours a day on a long-term basis, which is why a sheriff would request that the prisoner be transferred to a facility that does, Buckner said.