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State regulators later found no fault with the hospital, though investigators wrote his death might have been avoided had an inexpensive safety pin been used to secure the lift gate's latch.

McGuire said she and other family members went to the hospital to find out what happened.

"We were told very little," McGuire said. "I was very upset."

The state has continued to keep quiet about the incident. State regulators apparently never entered Mintz's information into a database of patient deaths, and a written report was not provided to the newspaper after a December public records request for all such documents.

Officials with the state Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the public mental hospitals, said last week that those omissions were an oversight.

Employee lost job

Records show the employee driving the truck lost his job less than two weeks after the accident. The hospital instituted new policies forbidding patients from riding in the back of trucks and requiring safety pins to secure lift gates.

Now remarried and living in Florida, McGuire has mixed feelings about the hospital that she says helped her son in many ways.

Not long before Mintz's death, McGuire said the Dix staff said he would likely be discharged and asked if she would be willing to let him come live with her in Florida. Instead, she bought a lot outside Roseboro with plans to put a mobile home there for her son.

"After he killed my husband, I was scared to let him live with me," McGuire said. "But I wanted to provide a place so he wouldn't be homeless. I still have the land."

(News researcher Lamara Williams contributed to this report.)

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