Man Loses Home, Freedom and Sanity Over Bus Transfers

This man may be paranoid, but they really are out to get him.

Simply being accused of stealing a book of Utah Transit Authority bus transfers has kept Mark Yowell in jail for three months—and if he’s released, he’ll be homeless, having lost his subsidized housing because of the incident. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Yowell’s been homeless before. He has been taking his medications and generally pulled his life together in the past year, his girlfriend says, but that has stalled because of a disagreement about a $2 bus transfer.

“It’s just outrageous,” says Karen Baldwin, Yowell’s girlfriend, who blames the bus driver for creating the chaos. Though she didn’t witness the May 22 episode that led to Yowell’s incarceration, she knows the bus driver and has seen him interact with Yowell before. “He treats Mark like a 5-year-old,” which is demeaning and escalates disagreements, Baldwin says.

The 36-year-old Yowell, who says he has not taken medication in jail because he doesn’t trust his jailers, is a little hazy about details these days. When asked how long he’s been in jail, he says “almost a month,” when really it’s been more than three months.

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There were witnesses, but UTA Police did not make reports of any interviews with them. Yowell was released from jail about a week after the incident because charges still had not been filed. Three months later, in August, he was picked up on a $10,000 warrant after the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office filed a second-degree felony robbery charge. That charge, which requires proof that Yowell stole the transfers by use of “force or fear,” carries a potential prison sentence of up to 15 years. Yowell has been in jail ever since.

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Crying while relaying the news, Baldwin says she fears she may never see Yowell again. “[If he’s sent to the state hospital] I’ll lose him for sure, and I’ll lose him forever,” she says. “Because he doesn’t know these people, and he doesn’t trust them. So how are they going to get any kind of rapport with him just sticking him down there? They’re not. They don’t understand the whole thing with schizophrenia.”

[Salt Lake City Weekly]