A Lafayette man is now a fugitive after leaving a hotel room where he’d been staying as part of a mental health diversion program he’d started weeks earlier to settle charges of holding a family hostage inside their apartment for hours.
Kenneth David McIsaac, 32, was charged last year with 12 felony counts that included kidnapping, false imprisonment by violence, robbery, burglary and child abuse. He spent a year in jail while the case was pending, until last month, when Judge Julia Campins ruled that McIsaac qualified for a mental health diversion program that allowed him to stay at a hotel but required him to do submit to drug testing and other supervision.
Now McIsaac has a no-bail warrant for his arrest, court records show.
Contra Costa County prosecutors objected to placing him in the diversion program, as did the woman who McIsaac allegedly held hostage last year, along with her husband and children. They escaped because they were somehow able to break free from duct tape bonds and overpower McIsaac, authorities said.
At a Sept. 5 court hearing, a deputy district attorney read aloud a statement from the Lafayette woman, who said her children still live in constant fear and that she felt the justice system “failed” her.
“While he held us hostage, he confessed that he had been watching me and my children for two months. He was surprised to find out that I had a husband and that he was home at that time,” the woman’s statement reads. “This was obviously a premeditated crime.”
Campins, in response to prosecutors’ objection, said she believed that diversion would do a better job addressing McIsaac’s underlying mental illness than the prison system. McIsaac’s lawyer said he was in a “very intensive” residential treatment program that would ensure community safety, a transcript of the hearing shows.
“If properly done and properly managed, it is actually safer to have someone receive treatment and guidance through this process than place them in prison for a period of time with no such treatment and then released,” Campins said.
Authorities cannot divulge the location of the hotel room that McIsaac left in violation of his diversion conditions, but say he is believed to be in the Bay Area.
The story behind McIsaac’s case started on Sept. 24, 2022, when he allegedly broke into a Lafayette apartment, forced the family to be tied up at gunpoint and held them hostage for five hours until they were able to break free. It turned out that McIsaac was living the same apartment complex, and a search of his apartment turned up an oddity: McIsaac had tinted out a single window overlooking a path frequented by other residents, save for an eyehole that he allegedly used to spy on others, according to court records.
The Lafayette family has filed a lawsuit against Essex, the property trust that runs the complex, alleging that McIsaac was known to drink heavily in the hot tub and had been suspected of lewd behavior. The civil complaint alleges the company “never advertised or disclosed that at the Lafayette Highlands apartment a certain tenant was permitted to wander around naked except for his bathrobe, masturbate in public, get drunk in the hot tub, knock randomly on apartment doors and stalk single mothers and their children.”
Two years earlier, McIsaac had been charged in Alameda County with attacking a family member. He was ultimately sentenced to six days in jail and two years probation, a term that ended just two months before the Lafayette incident.
McIsaac qualified for the program under a new state law passed to divert people with mental illness who would otherwise languish in prison. The law allows exceptions for accused murderers and people charged with sex crimes, and therein lies another controversy for the case.
Daniel Horowitz, a Lafayette-based attorney representing the family allegedly held hostage by McIsaac, has argued that prosecutors should have charged McIsaac with assault with intent to commit rape, a charge that would have disqualified McIsaac from the diversion program. Prosecutors have countered that they filed 12 felony charges and objected to diversion, and that the evidence didn’t support filing a sex charge.
In a phone interview, the woman said McIsaac entered the home with wine and played with her hair during the ordeal, which she interpreted as sexual in nature.
“He didn’t come to rob, otherwise he would rob and leave. He came, as he told us, ‘for fun,'” the woman said. “I’m afraid some other family won’t be as lucky as me.”
