This is a remarkable story. In
2017, a homeless man named Joshua Spriestersbach was standing in a long line
outside a Honolulu shelter. It was a miserably hot day, and Spriestersbach
hadn’t eaten in several days. Suddenly he fainted. The police were called, and
after they had roused him awake, Spriestersbach assumed he was being arrested
for sleeping on the sidewalk where he had passed out.
Spriestersbach, left and Castleberry, right
What happened next is odd. One of the cops who knew another homeless man named Thomas Castleberry mistook Spriestersbach for Castleberry and arrested him on an outstanding warrant for violating probation in a 2006 drug case.Spriestersbach and Castleberry
had never met, nor did Spriestersbach ever claim to be Castleberry, although
the arresting police officers lied and said he did. The chances that recently revived from the
sidewalk Spriestersbach could have come
up with an alias like Thomas Castleberry are remarkable.
That was the start of a two-year
nightmare. Spriestersbach was locked up in a state mental hospital and forced
to take psychiatric drugs and the more that Spriestersbach insisted he wasn’t
Castleberry, the more he was determined to be delusional and psychotic by the
hospital staff who kept him heavily medicated.
Finally, a young psychiatrist
listened to Spriestersbach and determined he might be telling the truth. The
psychiatrist called the police and had them come to the hospital and take
Spriestersbach fingerprints and photograph and compare to their files. Sure
enough, they were holding the wrong man. The real Castleberry was in prison in
Alaska.
The hospital ad the police held
an emergency meeting and decided to secretly release Spriestersbach, who had a
series of mental health issues. He was returned to the streets without an
explanation, cash, or a place to stay.
A homeless shelter contacted his
family, who took Spriestersbach to live with his sister on a ten-acre property
in Vermont, which, Spriestersbach, understandably, refuses to leave.