Aaron Roden attends a hearing in the courtroom of Judge Gary Starnes at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Courts building Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, in Chattanooga.
Safety Inspector Frank Bilbrey, left, and Assistant Principal Ruthie Panni examine extensive damage caused by a vandal inside of a portable classroom at Westview Elementary School in August. Aaron Roden, 22, was apprehended and charged by police at the scene early Tuesday morning.Before he refused to reduce Aaron Roden's bond, General Sessions Court Judge Gary Starnes on Thursday referenced the 12-page forensic evaluation that detailed the man's psychological history.
Roden's parents have said their son, accused of doing more than $18,000 in damage by trashing Westview Elementary School, suffers from mental illness and that the system has been unable to help him. The court-ordered evaluation revealed another aspect of his violent outburst.
In the evaluation, Roden, 22, said he took 57 Adderall tablets, a handful of Xanax and 10 hits of LSD before blanking out, Starnes said. Roden said he doesn't remember anything that happened inside the school on that early August morning.
The judge said Roden has defied his parents' repeated attempts to help him, and Starnes was concerned about the possibility of Roden being released to the public.
"In regard to violent behavior, almost every single instance involved raging drug use mixing all sort of hallucinogens, LSD, marijuana, Adderall, mixing all of those together, which this report seems to indicate fueled his very violent behavior," Starnes said.
Starnes heard testimony from police and school officials Thursday before he bound over vandalism, burglary and aggravated assault charges against Roden to a grand jury. The judge also denied defense attorney Bill Speek's request that Roden's bond be lowered so he could be transferred out of the Hamilton County Jail to CCA Silverdale, where Speek said mental health services are better.
Early on the morning of Aug. 12, deputies found Roden tearing apart a classroom at Westview, sweating profusely, throwing objects and tearing apart ceiling tiles, urinals and windows, witnesses testified Thursday.
After battling arrest and being stunned with a Taser, Roden was taken to Erlanger hospital, where his aggressive behavior prompted hospital workers to restrain him. But he managed to break free after being Tasered again and grabbed an IV pole, which he threw at a deputy "like an arrow, like a javelin," the deputy testified.
The damage to the hospital room took 12 days to repair and amounted to more than $20,000 including the cost for loss of use, a hospital construction supervisor testified. Roden was charged with aggravated assault and vandalism in that incident as well.
At one point in the hearing, detectives, attorneys, the judge and Roden gathered to watch a laptop video of his police interview. On the video, Roden, sitting in a wheelchair, told police he only remembered going to a park near the school, which is also close to where his girlfriend lives. His parents said in August that his girlfriend had broken up with him that day.
"I had taken a lot of the drugs and I went to the park. And I went just go sit in the park and be lonely and just sit there," Roden said. He got angry and started tossing a chair around the park, he said. Then his memory went blank.
"From then on I don't really remember what happened inside the school building," Roden said.
Speek asked the judge to reduce Roden's bond to less than $100,000 -- not so Roden could be released, he said, but so he could be transferred to CCA Silverdale, where the treatment "tends to be a little bit better," Speek said.
The mental evaluation showed an extensive history of mental illness and addiction along with drug abuse, Speek said.
"We think that of his history of drug abuse is contrary to the mental illness argument," Assistant District Attorney General Ben Boyer said. "He's pretty much self-inflicted this upon himself through his years of drug use."
Speek asked a deputy who found Roden if the suspect looked like he was experiencing a "mental episode."
"He looked more like he was high, was my first impression," the officer said.
Photos taken at the school also included snapshots of broken urinals, shattered glass and Roden's blood-covered shorts, which he would later tell deputies he took off when he got hot. Roden was charged with two counts of aggravated assault, vandalism over $60,000 and burglary in that incident.
Before he bound over the cases, Starnes reduced the first vandalism charge to vandalism over $10,000 and the second to vandalism over $20,000, to reflect damage estimates given by Erlanger and the Hamilton County school district.
Starnes said he thinks Roden can recover in an in-patient setting.
Thursday's hearing was a continuance after two previous court dates were pushed back. During the first, in October, defense attorneys and their witnesses were ready to move forward, but defense attorneys requested the date be moved until after the results of a psychological evaluation were completed.
On Tuesday, Starnes again moved the date after key witnesses were not present in court. Boyer said they may have been confused by the hearing's 1:30 start time, which is unusual for preliminary hearings, or did not receive their subpoenas due to a clerical error. All witnesses were present at the Thursday hearing.
Contact staff writer Claire Wiseman at cwiseman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow her on Twitter @clairelwiseman.