Family claims administrators at Hawaiʻi’s only public psychiatric hospital failed to institute basic safety protocols to prevent the death of Justin Bautista by a patient.

The stabbing death of a staff nurse in 2023 was not the “unanticipated and unprovoked incident” described by Hawaiʻi State Hospital leaders at the time, but the result of chronic safety failures at the institution, according to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by the nurse’s family.

Hospital leaders ignored multiple warning signs, chronic overcapacity and staffing issues, and failed to put basic measures in place to prevent a patient with a violent past from obtaining the knife he used to kill nurse Justin Bautista, the lawsuit says.

The patient, Tommy Carvalho, was housed in an unsecured unit despite having previou

See Full Page