More than a year after Kenneth Chapman killed his wife, teenage stepdaughter, baby and himself, his family is suing Carolinas Healthcare System, arguing that inadequate care from a county mental health hospital led to the killings.

As the Observer reported last year, Chapman, 33, had gone to the Carolinas Medical Center-Randolph mental health emergency room the night before the killings, on March 16, 2010. It was his second visit in two weeks. Chapman had told staff he'd been seeing shadows of people who weren't there. He was depressed and angry, he said. He was thinking about killing his wife.

Hours later, hospital staff sent him home with a prescription for antidepressants and anxiety medicine, and directions to call for a follow-up appointment. Police say that day, he suffocated his wife Nateesha Chapman, stabbed her 13-year-old daughter Na'Jhae Parker to death and suffocated the couple's 1-year-old girl, Nakyiah Chapman.

"These tragedies could have been prevented," wrote a team of lawyers representing Chapman's surviving relatives. They filed the lawsuit Thursday afternoon in Mecklenburg County Superior Court.

Jim Cooney, a Charlotte attorney representing the hospital, said the hospital is not to blame.

"This tragedy had been many months, if not many years, in the making. The cause of this tragedy was not medical malpractice, nor was it any policy established by the Carolinas HealthCare System," Cooney said in a statement.

"We believe that Mr. Chapman was appropriately seen, evaluated, monitored and treated on the two occasions that he came to CMC-Randolph," Cooney said.

An Observer investigation last year found that demand for mental health beds in Mecklenburg County has surged over the last decade while the number of beds remained flat. Fewer critically ill patients were admitted to psychiatric hospitals last year than in 2004 - 15 percent, compared to 21 percent. And a 2003 study found CMC-Randolph needed to be expanded, but the expansion plan went nowhere.

A shocking crime

The Chapman killings shook even veteran law enforcement officers, bringing one to tears during a news conference.

After the killings, police say Chapman locked the children's bodies in an upstairs bedroom and forced his surviving children to live for the next two weeks as if nothing had happened. His 10-year-old daughter went to school while Chapman stayed home with her 2-year-old brother at their apartment near Providence and Old Providence roads.

The girl said nothing to anyone, afraid Chapman would kill her and her brother. She told police her father held a gun to her head.

Two weeks later, at the end of March, police arrived to check on the family at the request of a concerned relative. The children ran from the house as Chapman fired at officers through the door, before killing himself.

Both surviving children have received counseling and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the lawsuit.

The family's attorneys, based in New Jersey and North Carolina, said the burden for much of the killings rests on the mental health system's inadequate response to Chapman's threats.

"Mental health services in Mecklenburg County, and particularly psychiatric emergency mental health services and inpatient psychiatric bed capacity, are woefully inadequate," the lawyers wrote.

The family is seeking unspecified monetary damages of more than $10,000.

The lawsuit accuses CHS of being negligent by failing to contact Chapman's wife when he was discharged. He had told staff he believed he could refrain from hurting anyone prior to his discharge, medical records show, but the family's lawyers say CMC-Randolph should have warmed Nateesha Chapman or police that her husband had said he wanted to kill her.

There was no documentation that the nurse who saw Chapman on the morning of the killings had reviewed the hospital's policy on warnings, the lawsuit says.

North Carolina law allows - but does not require - clinicians to disclose confidential information if they believe someone is in imminent danger. CMC policy says that if staff members believe there is a "clear and imminent reasonably foreseeable danger of harm by a patient to a known specific victim," they must consult with a supervisor and, if appropriate, warn police and intended victims.

The hospital also is accused in the lawsuit of other lapses in its treatment of Chapman.

Attorneys called the family's deaths "unnecessary, foreseeable, and could have and should have been prevented."

Chapman's relatives filing the suit include his stepfather James Cosby and Stephanie Ward, representing the estate of Chapman's wife. The suit was also filed on behalf of Chapman's surviving son and daughter.

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