Content warning: This story discusses violence and severe injury.
“You know what was weird is that when it was happening, it was like the Titanic. Everybody was just eating and I was bleeding on the floor.”
Corey Duncan Stewart, a longtime security guard in Austin, was working an evening shift as a security guard at the Peacock Mediterranean Grill, a restaurant in the luxury Austin Proper Hotel, when a man he escorted out grabbed a machete and swung toward Stewart’s neck. Stewart blocked it, and the blade sliced about halfway through his wrist, severing an artery and the ulnar nerve. Doctors told him he was only two minutes away from bleeding to death. Fortunately, he still has his hand, but it’s been two months and he still can’t feel two fingers.
Out of work and receiving only 70% of his previous income from workers’ compensation, he’s struggling with rent, pain, and nightmares. Stewart spent decades working as a bodyguard and in security, and now he’s faced with quickly finding a new line of work that doesn’t require two completely functional hands. Something else he didn’t expect: that the August 21 attack would become political.
The man charged with Stewart’s assault, Justin Bergin, has been homeless and in and out of jails for about a decade. The Austin Police Association jumped on the story, arguing that Bergin should’ve been in jail and that County Attorney Delia Garza was to blame.
“I see a lot of homeless guys my age, in their mid-forties. I get it,” Stewart told the Chronicle. “I feel like I’ve worked my ass off my entire life and I have nothing to show for it. I have no savings. I have debt. I’m a couple of bad choices away from being homeless myself, and it just seems that there’s not much of a safety net for people who are on the edge. What happens when you fall through the cracks? How do you survive?”
Bergin told us he really, really wants help. “I want to see a doctor,” he said. He suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2014 after being attacked with a hammer and has been prescribed several antipsychotic drugs in his life. He says during his four stays in Travis County Jail he’s always received some combination of his psychiatric meds, but after every release he’s been adrift.
Stewart says Aug. 21 his attacker was trying to get seated at the Peacock with a large, overflowing suitcase when Stewart asked him to leave. There was some back and forth, and within a few minutes the attacker grabbed the machete from his bag and swung at him. “When I looked down I was just like, holy fuck my hand is gone. And blood was going everywhere. My first thought was, ‘what a weird way to die.'” While others kept dining, one woman brought napkins to try to stop the bleeding, with a look in her eyes that scared Stewart. Police arrived in minutes and applied a potentially lifesaving tourniquet. Doctors cauterized the severed artery. Now Stewart points to his scarred wrist, and says, “This artery is gone. This one pumps and they said it’s making up for the loss of that one.
A month after Stewart nearly died, the Austin Police Association published a press release on the assault, saying Bergin had 30 encounters with police in two years, mostly for criminal trespassing. They wrote that his most recent arrest was rejected by Garza – though the County Attorney’s office tells us that’s not true. They accepted the charge and Bergin was released from jail shortly after because it was a low-level, nonviolent offense, they say.
“I’ve worked my ass off my entire life and I have nothing to show for it. I have no savings. I have debt. I’m a couple of bad choices away from being homeless myself.” – Survivor Corey Duncan Stewart
APA wrote in the release that, “Garza has made a pattern and practice of wholesale rejecting Criminal trespass charges, among others, since taking office. … Failing to prosecute criminals has real life consequences and this is only one more example in what appears to be a never ending list.” Those final sentences of the APA press release seem to be a call for someone to take on the expensive process of petitioning for Garza’s removal from office. The new “rogue prosecutor” law in Texas targets county and district attorneys who oppose mass incarceration by making it possible to remove them over a “policy of refusing to prosecute a class or type of criminal offense.”
Stewart says he didn’t have anything to do with that APA press release, and of Delia Garza’s policies he says, “I have no idea. I know the name.” But for him, the traumatic event crystallized how alone Travis County residents can be in their suffering. Stewart feels alone handling a sudden injury that eroded his finances overnight. He’s gotten some help through a GoFundMe, but not enough to make up for lost work.
The other side of the coin is Bergin. Stewart knew nothing of Bergin’s life story, but assumed he’d been left to fend for himself at some point, too.
“As far as jail, I don’t think that’s necessarily the answer. That’s what we’re using for our mental health services. There’s nuances. This guy, maybe he should’ve been in jail. Maybe there’s only so many times somebody can do something before you say a tiger won’t change his stripes,” Stewart said. “I feel like there should be more of a social safety net in our society. To help people to get back on our feet, instead of being like, alright well, you fucked up, good luck with your life, good luck being homeless or maybe you’ll get arrested.”
Danny Smith, head of mental health for the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, says Integral Care, the county’s public mental health authority, has an intake team in the jail that connects people to their services post-release. But Bergin told us no one from Integral Care has ever contacted him or helped him continue the prescriptions he’s received while incarcerated.
“I believe it’s not a violent city and for the most part people are kind here,” Bergin said. But he hates the jail. He spent a month in a psych unit, “under 23-hour-a-day lockdown. They treat us like animals.” Bergin told us earlier this month that he wants to talk to a counselor, but “they’re full and understaffed.” Smith said screenings aren’t delayed – everyone is screened two or three times within their first 36 hours in jail. But when scheduling follow-up appointments with counselors, staff prioritize based on each patient’s needs. “At times we do run behind because of staffing,” Smith said.
Bergin wants a follow-up, partly because he thinks he should be receiving a much higher dose of Trazodone, an antidepressant and sedative. Overall, he liked being incarcerated in his hometown of Omaha better. He described Travis County mental health screening assessments as a series of yes or no questions, but spoke highly of a Nebraska prison psychiatrist in his home state of Nebraska. Dr. Gene Olevito made him feel cared for and helped him get disability benefits, Bergin said. We found that Olevito was later fired by the state. Olevito claimed in a lawsuit that the firing was retaliatory because he testified in court that he had repeatedly requested a certain prisoner be involuntarily committed to a mental health hospital, but the prisoner was instead incarcerated until his sentence was up. Upon release from prison, the man murdered four people.
Though Stewart believes we need more mental health services, he says: “I want [Bergin] to go to prison for the rest of his life. I feel like he’s that much of a threat. He could’ve easily killed me,” Stewart said. “But how did this happen? How did he end up on the street? What’s the policy with this? Is this just a rotating door of, like, he gets a slap on the wrist and he’s out on the street again. Like, don’t be a bad boy anymore? I would hope there’s a broader societal discussion about mental health illness in our society and what that looks like and how we can tackle the issue, because it seems like it’s a free for all.”
This article appears in October 27 • 2023.
