Meanwhile, the two people who were facing trial over the 2022 incident, Dao and Leatham, fought with investigators at every step, records show.
Two weeks after being arrested, Leatham, identified in records as a transgender woman, attempted to escape from North Bay Hospital in Vacaville, according to court records. Leatham pretended to fall asleep and, when a deputy went to wash his hands in a bathroom, allegedly fled out an emergency exit door. The deputy ran Leatham down outside.
In February 2023, Leatham tried to escape again, prosecutors said. When deputies took her to a Vallejo courthouse for a hearing, Leatham requested a wheelchair. As the deputy went to get one, Leatham allegedly ran out of the transport truck but got caught at a cyclone fence.
In July 2023, Dao tried to escape a jail cell, records show. Prosecutors said Dao pretended to be choking and having a seizure; after officers determined the prisoner was fine and left the cell, Dao ran toward the door. The closing door pinched Dao’s hand, officials said, requiring hospital treatment.
Both Dao and Leatham have undergone mental health evaluations, according to court records. On July 16, 2023, Leatham wrote a letter to a judge claiming: “I am rational. I do not have a ‘mental illness’ and I do not need ‘treatment’.”

Leatham told a judge she would like to represent herself in court. She said that her belief in uncommon ideas like reincarnation did not render her incompetent to participate in her defense. “I feel like the psychologists are saying that unless I believe some specific things about the world I won’t be able to rationally relate to anyone and that’s not true,” she wrote.
Later, Leatham, a vegan like others in the fringe group, countered what prosecutors called her “delusions” in another letter to a judge. “Is it my belief that financially supporting death camps and consuming the corpses of their victims is wrong and those who do so are monsters?” she asked.
A judge ruled Leatham was competent and, in October 2024, that there was enough evidence to move to a jury trial this April. It’s unclear now how that trial will proceed considering Lind’s death. Records show prosecutors had, due to Lind’s age, recorded his testimony during the case’s preliminary hearing.