Months before Devon Watson was accused in the seemingly unprovoked stabbing of a woman in downtown Detroit, a judge learned that he’d threatened to kill people.
Watson was free from his court-ordered hospitalization, and his attorney says he was "seeing things" on the fateful day 34-year-old Jaquoya Wix died.
Now, while the 42-year-old man undergoes a competency evaluation in the criminal case against him, officials are reviewing possible improvements to the system meant to track people like Watson whose mental health concerns make their way into a courtroom.
Overall, communities need to be more proactive in addressing mental health concerns, said Kevin Fischer, executive director of the Michigan branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“It’s a shame that it takes tragedies like this to focus on it,” he said.
Downtown Detroit stabbing suspect was 'agitated and threatening' in July
Watson was a substantial risk, “predominately to others,” a psychologist testified in July 2026.
As previously reported by the Free Press, police took Watson to a Trenton emergency room on July 3 to have him hospitalized for mental health treatment.
He was “acting out at a coffee shop,” appeared “psychotic,” and was “making nonsensical statements, like, ‘I’m on menopause,’” court records show. He had "paranoia rambling speech" and a doctor checked a box on a report to indicate Watson could “reasonably be expected within the near future to intentionally or unintentionally seriously physically injure self or others.
Then came the required July 13 probate court hearing on whether to hospitalize Watson. The Free Press recently obtained transcripts from that day.
A psychologist for Havenwyck Hospital in Auburn Hills testified that she’d attempted to interview Watson at the hospital, according to the transcripts.
“He met me in the doorway of his room,” she said during the court hearing. “He was quite psychotic; he would not let me speak; he would not let me introduce myself. I tried interrupting him several times. I was not able to and then he went back into his room, into the bathroom and didn’t come out.”
Based on his medical records and care team, however, she deduced that Watson was not willing to receive any treatment and was refusing all medications. He had deteriorated, was engaging in behavior not “appropriate on the unit,” and she believed medicine would be needed to stabilize him, she said.
She didn’t think he could be safely returned to the community as he was.
Watson had "been pretty agitated and threatening," she said. He specifically issued a threat to whoever called police on him, landing him in the hospital.
“He said, he didn’t know who called them, but if he found out he would kill them," the psychologist told the judge.
There wasn’t a lot of information on Watson's history so it was unclear how long it might take to stabilize him, the psychologist said.
She recommended the combination of hospitalization and outpatient treatment that the judge eventually granted, with maximums of 60 days and 180 days, respectively.
Watson is homeless and the psychologist also said there would need to be an assessment for supervised living, too.
Questions remain in Detroit stabbing suspect's mental health case
People hospitalized for mental health treatment aren't expected to be fully recovered when they are released from the hospital, several experts told the Free Press. Rather, they are released once stabilized.
It’s unclear to the court if Watson got treatment after his hospital release and what it was, said Milton Mack, a former state court administrator, former chief Wayne County Probate Court judge and the current chair of the state’sMental Health Diversion Council. That is a governor-appointed body working to divert people with mental illness from the justice system and into treatment.
Mack also serves as an advisor to Wayne County Probate Court’s Behavioral Health Unit.
Watson was supposed to get outpatient treatment, at least according to the order issued at that July 13 hearing.
The slated provider contracted by the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network, or DWIHN, for that service was Central City Health, Mack said, and it was supposed to send a treatment plan to the court.
The provider can also alert the court to take action if the person needing treatment can’t be located or if that person isn’t complying.
Mack said the court didn’t receive any of that information.
It’s an issue that is “too common” across the state, he said.
Central City Health did not respond to requests for comment and neither did DWIHN, though the CEO of the network, James White, said at a prior news conference that the agency has launched an internal investigation into potential systemic failures between the services and the court.
Court might change practices after downtown Detroit stabbing
Asked if the court has a mechanism to make sure it gets a missing treatment plan, Mack said it’s not a practice currently embedded in the system.
But it would be good practice for courts to track such data and reach out, he said.
Several days after first speaking with the Free Press, Mack reported that court leaders were, indeed, discussing possible ideas such as including with the court’s order a notice that treatment plans are due within 30 days, sending subsequent reminders, and thereafter sending warnings of possible contempt when treatment plans don’t get turned in.
Another possible maneuver, he noted – DWIHN could put a requirement in its contracts that subcontractors, like Central City Health, don’t get paid unless they file treatment plans with the court and then alert DWIHN.
“This is a teaching moment,” he said of the Watson case, adding: “We know things did not go well in this case, we just don’t know why it didn’t go well so we can devise a way to make it work.”
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy drew a line between the criminal matter and the mental health case when she announced that her office charged Watson with first-degree premeditated murder in Wix’s death.
She emphasized two words in particular as she discussed the matter.
“Just because someone may have - may have - mental health issues, does not mean they are not acutely responsible for their actions,” she said.
Watson’s newly appointed lawyer, Charles Longstreet II, however, asked the public to keep his client’s mental health concerns in mind.
Watson was on medication at a prior time, but he was not on medication at the time of the stabbing and was seeing and hearing things that weren’t real, Longstreet II said in an interview Tuesday, Sept. 29, with the Free Press.
A defense investigation is underway, and a possible defense could be that Watson is not guilty by reason of insanity, he said.
Mental health leader weighs in on threats ahead of downtown stabbing
Making threats is a symptom of illnesses like schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, said Fischer, of the Michigan chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
“People who live with psychotic diagnosis - it is common to make statements like that; it’s highly unusual to act on it,” he said.
That said, he thinks such statements should be taken seriously.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit stabbing suspect threatened to kill people months prior
