A remarakable story

 

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.