Several recent incidents of residents wandering away from a Cobb County mental health facility have neighbors on edge and calling for better security, Channel 2 Action News reported.
“I turned around and saw a lady, wild eyed, pushing her way through my garage trying to get into my house and she said, ‘You’ve got to let me in, you’ve got to let me in,’” a Smyrna resident who lives off Ridge Road near Ridgeview Institute told the station.
The woman appeared frightened and confused as she tried to push through a screen to get into the resident’s house.
“And I said, ‘No, you’re not coming into my house,’” the resident said. “So with force I pushed and the dog started barking and she took off running.”
Neighbors said it was the third time a Ridgeview resident has shown up in their subdivision, the news station reported.
Days before the latest incident, Smyrna police put out a lookout for another woman who got out of the facility, Channel 2 reported. After wandering in the area for hours, she was located.
“You never know if this person is on drugs or has weapons, which one person did who was in here,” the resident said, “and we just want to be safe.”
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