Stein, GOP lawmakers react to teacher killing: 'We are not doing a good enough job'

Gov. Josh Stein is calling on state lawmakers to focus more on treating people with mental health issues that pose a risk to the public. Lawmakers, meanwhile, say they plan to focus on mental health when they return to session this year, and they hope to enable more staffed beds in psychiatric hospitals.

"We have to do a better job with this intersection between folks out there who are paranoid, they're delusional, who can pose risks," Stein said Tuesday after a regular meeting of the Council of State. "Obviously, not everybody with mental health challenges are a violent risk, but there are some who are, and we are not doing a good enough job treating those folks."

Stein's comments come days after Zoe Welsh, a long-time science teacher at the private Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, was killed in her home. 

Police say Ryan Camacho, 36, attacked Welsh while she was on the phone with 911, after he broke into her home. Online court records show Camacho had a history of mental health challenges.

A public defender representing Camacho declined to comment on Tuesday.  

Stein called Welsh's death "absolutely heartbreaking" noting that he has friends whose children were Welsh's students. 

"She was a remarkable teacher," Stein said. "She shouldn't be dead. She should be alive. She should be in school teaching today."

Mental health has been at the center of debates over changes in the criminal justice system following the fatal stabbing of a woman last year on a Charlotte commuter train. Democrats, including Stein, have said the state needs to better fund mental health services and pass new laws to remove guns from people judged to be dangers to themselves or others, changes they say could prevent crime. Republicans, who control the state legislature and have been mired in a standoff over state spending, have rejected Democrats’ ideas and focused instead on increasing punishments for people after they’re arrested or convicted. 

One area of bipartisan agreement, however, is that more people need to be involuntarily committed to mental hospitals. Stein praised lawmakers for that ongoing focus.

Lack of mental health funding

Stein said Tuesday that initiatives are out there to help those in need of mental health assistance. 

"There are these behavioral health urgent care centers, BHUCs, that the state is now setting up, which can be very helpful, so that if somebody is having a mental health crisis — 24/7 — they have a place to go that's not the emergency department," Stein said. "Because that's not the right place. Jail is not the right place. We need to treat folks."

But funding is a constant constraint on the state's ability to provide mental health services. A new state law passed in response to the Charlotte killing, called Iryna's Law, required stricter new rules for people to be involuntarily committed for mental treatment. But that part of the law has been put on hold, not going into place yet, due to concerns over funding and implementation.

"We need a budget that invests in public safety, and I will continue to urge the legislature to do their job," Stein told reporters.

WRAL interviewed two top state budget writers Tuesday — Republican Reps. Erin Paré and John Torbett — after Stein's remarks. Each said mental health is going to be a top focus of the legislature's when it kicks off its 2026 session in the spring.

Torbett said he's hopeful the state will be able to staff more beds in mental hospitals to house dangerous people, to "just basically take care of their needs by getting them out of society — because they can't make it in society. And that, along with perhaps increasing the strength of our law enforcement, maybe we can make some significant changes."

When WRAL asked Paré if the state was spending enough on mental health, she said: "No. I think we need to do better. We need to pass a budget, which I think we will do in the spring. And this is a priority for us."

Paré reiterated that she doesn't believe she and her fellow Republicans in the legislature should take the blame for crimes tied to people with mental issues, even if she does agree mental health funding isn't where it should be.

"This is a soft-on-crime problem that, I believe, really rests on the Democrats," she said. "And where the legislature can come in is, we can zip up the law. We can require judges to make some decisions that will make our community safer. We can be tougher on crime. But we also need to address mental health, and that does require funding, and I'm in favor of that as a budget writer."

Lengthy criminal record

Camacho has a lengthy criminal history going back more than a decade in both Wake and Durham counties. Court records show Camacho has been arrested more than 20 times.

In many of those cases, records show, Camacho was either charged with a misdemeanor or the cases were dropped altogether.

Camacho's mother, Cynthia Camacho, sought and was granted guardianship over him multiple times, citing "incompetency." WRAL News went to her home on Monday, but she declined an interview request. 

In December, breaking-and-entering charges against Camacho in a separate case were dismissed following a mental competency examination. During the hearing, prosecutors asked to have Camacho involuntarily committed. However, that request was denied by a judge, according to Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman 

Wake County Judge Louis Meyer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision to deny involuntary commitment to Camacho.

"Someone can be found not capable to proceed and yet determined that they're not an imminent threat to themselves or others," Freeman told WRAL News on Monday.

Paré, who represents southwest Wake County in the state legislature, said those details keep coming in conversations with locals. She wants to look into options the legislature might have to crack down on judges, who are in a separate branch of government.

"Even when the district attorney requests that this person be involuntarily committed, the judge then looks and says, ‘Well, he may not be competent to stand trial, but he's not an imminent threat to society, and we're not going to hold him,’ — I think that's what the legislature needs to look at," she said. "And I think that's what most people, who are following this story, are saying. How can those two things be true at the same time?"