Patient aggression intensifies at Napa State Hospital

When Napa State Hospital psychiatric technician Donna Gross was strangled last month on the hospital grounds, state officials lamented her death as a tragic and rare event, the first killing of a staffer in two decades.

They pledged to improve security by offering staff members shuttle rides to the parking lot, and they temporarily barred patients from going outside unaccompanied.

But a Times review suggests safety problems at the facility are neither rare nor so readily fixed.