COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) – A Midlands mental health facility is getting the attention of lawmakers in South Carolina and Hawaii after two patients died there last year.<\/p>\n
Columbia Regional Care Center is a 347-bed mental health facility on Farrow Road. It houses patients from across the country who are found incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity. The center is a partner agency to the South Carolina Department of Mental Health and multiple federal, state, and local agencies.<\/p>\n
Just last year, Curtis Panoke, a mental health patient who was transferred to the facility from Hawaii, died. He was beaten by other patients at the facility in 2016 and spent nine years in a coma before he passed away.<\/p>\n
According to Hawaii News Now, his family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against both the parent company of the facility and the state of Hawaii.<\/p>\n
Hawaii News Now spoke to another family who also raised concerns. Their loved one, Payton Hough, died by suicide<\/a> last November while being treated at the facility. His family questions how that could happen with him being on suicide watch.<\/p>\n Hawaii News Now<\/a> also reports investigations have uncovered past issues at Columbia Regional Care Center, including staff accused or convicted of assaulting patients and other deaths under question.<\/p>\n Hough\u2019s family is calling for accountability.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re devastated. Our world fell apart. Our worst nightmare. The thing that we\u2019ve been trying to prevent from happening happened. We\u2019re fighting for him,\u201d a family member said.<\/p>\n It is unknown how many mental health patients from the region are currently housed at the facility.<\/p>\n The South Carolina Department of Public Health has been asked if they are currently reviewing conditions at the facility. Incident reports have been requested from the Richland County Sheriff\u2019s Department and the coroner\u2019s office.<\/p>\n WIS reached out to the facility for comment, but has not responded.<\/p>\n Feel more informed, prepared, and connected with WIS. For more free content like this, subscribe to our email newsletter<\/a>, and download our apps<\/a>. Have feedback that can help us improve? Click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 WIS. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) – A Midlands mental health facility is getting the attention of lawmakers in South Carolina…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":746770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[36],"tags":[307456,196298,17495,137292,307457,282934,210,517,3036,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-746769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-columbia-regional-care-center","tag-department-of-mental-health","tag-department-of-public-health","tag-dph","tag-hawaii-department-of-public-health","tag-hawaii-news-now","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-south-carolina","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116451894648625877","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}