Sen. R. Creigh Deeds gets to work as Virginia's General Assembly reconvenes at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. It was his first public appearance since he was attacked in November by his mentally ill son, who then took his own life. 
 
 Jan. 8, 2014 Sen. R. Creigh Deeds gets to work as Virginia's General Assembly reconvenes at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond. It was his first public appearance since he was attacked in November by his mentally ill son, who then took his own life. Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post 
 
 Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) was stabbed repeatedly last year in an assault by his mentally ill, 24-year-old son, Austin Deeds, at the family house in Bath County, west of Charlottesville. Austin Deeds then fatally shot himself. Deeds faults the state’s mental health system in the incident, and he has returned to the state Senate determined to strengthen the emergency-custody process for the mentally ill. 
 
 Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) was stabbed multiple times early Tuesday in an assault at his house in Bath County, west of Charlottesville, State Police said. The senator’s 24-year-old son, Austin Deeds, was found fatally shot inside the home. 
 
 Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) was stabbed multiple times early Tuesday in an assault at his house in Bath County, west of Charlottesville, State Police said. The senator’s 24-year-old son, Austin Deeds, was found fatally shot inside the home. 
 
 The day before he apparently stabbed his father at the family’s home in rural Bath County, the son of Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds underwent a psychiatric evaluation but was not admitted to a hospital, because no bed was available. 
 
 Deeds was listed in fair condition late Tuesday after his son, Austin, stabbed him in the face and chest, then shot himself in what investigators suspect was an attempted murder and suicide. 
 
 The incident thrust the senator back into the spotlight after several years of quiet. Deeds (D) vaulted to the statewide political stage in 2009 as the Democratic nominee for governor, only to lose to Republican Robert F. McDonnell (R). After the defeat, Deeds went through a divorce and largely receded from public view, even though he stayed on in the Senate. 
 
 The violence also culminated what appears to have been a downward spiral for Deeds’s son, Austin, 24, a banjo-playing former campaign volunteer for his father who dropped out of college last month and whose apparent psychiatric problems had prompted an examination Monday. 
 
 The attack on the senator brought new scrutiny to Virginia’s mental-health system. Six years after the Virginia Tech massacre, which prompted an outpouring of attention and dollars for state mental-health care, advocates still say the system is starved for money and reform. Lawmakers, state officials and mental-health advocates expressed agreement Tuesday that a shortage of beds for patients in crisis is one significant problem. 
 
 Law enforcement authorities said that Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) was stabbed multiple times at his home, apparently by his 24-year-old son Austin Deeds, who then shot himself to death. (Video courtesy of WRICTV) 
 
 On Monday, a magistrate issued an emergency custody order for Austin Deeds, who was also known as Gus, after he had been evaluated by officials at the Rockbridge County Community Services Board, said Mary Ann Bergeron, the executive director of the Virginia Association of Community Services Boards. The boards oversee the local provision of mental-health services across Virginia. 
 
 Dennis Cropper, who leads the Rockbridge County Community Services Board, also confirmed the younger Deeds’s psychiatric evaluation, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. 
 
 Rockbridge officials had called hospitals in the area looking for a spot but were unable to find one, Bergeron said. “I can tell you right now, it was multiple hospitals that they called,” she said. “That is a very rural area. The hospitals are few and far between.” 
 
 Bergeron said local hospitals have been reducing and in some cases eliminating psychiatric wards, making it more difficult to find spots for people requiring involuntary detention, particularly in more rural parts of the state. 
 
 “I wouldn’t say this happens every day, but it’s more common than we’d like for it to be,” Bergeron said. 
 
 State investigators said Tuesday that they were still trying to establish a motive and the sequence of events that led to the violence, which they said appeared to begin with an altercation between the men. 
 
 After his son attacked him, Deeds, bleeding from his face and chest, walked to the end of his driveway in Bath County, about 100 miles west of Charlottesville, police said. A cousin driving by spotted him, called police at 7:25 a.m., then drove him to a nearby farm. A helicopter flew the senator to the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, where doctors performed surgery. 
 
 When they arrived at Deeds’s home Tuesday, investigators found Austin Deeds suffering from a life-threatening gunshot wound. Austin died before they could stabilize him. 
 
 The spasm of violence stunned the community of Bath County, where the elder Deeds grew up and is well known. 
 
 “We are totally devastated. He has been our little hero all of these years,” said Betsy Byrd, 74, of Healing Springs, who works at a boutique across the street from Deeds’s law firm and talks with him at least a handful of times each week. “. . . His pains will go away, but he will never get over losing a child. His heart must be broken. All of our hearts are broken.” 
 
 Several friends and neighbors said they knew little of the younger Deeds’s struggles, and the reason for his psychiatric evaluation remained unclear late Tuesday. 
 
 Del. David J. Toscano (D-Charlottesville), a close friend of the senator’s, spent the day at the hospital with the family. 
 
 “He was very close to his son and spent a lot of time trying to help him,” Toscano said. 
 
 Deeds’s political rise in Virginia has spanned two decades, beginning with his service as a county prosecutor and including time as a state delegate, state senator and gubernatorial candidate. Across the state, politicians expressed sorrow Tuesday, including McDonnell, Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe (D) and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R). 
 
 “The news from this morning is utterly heartbreaking,” McDonnell said in a statement. “Creigh Deeds is an exceptional and committed public servant.” 
 
 Deeds and his second wife, Siobhan, whom he married last year, had returned Friday from a week-long trip that included stops in Spain and Ireland, according to posts on Siobhan Deeds’s Facebook page. 
 
 Until last month, Austin Deeds was a student at the College of William and Mary, where he first enrolled in 2007, according to the college. He was one of the state senator’s four children from his first marriage, and his only son. 
 
 Sarah E. King, 27, a family friend, said in a telephone interview that Austin had dropped out of William and Mary in his senior year, then returned to the college before withdrawing again in October. King said she could not explain why he had left school, but she described him as someone of many interests, including the guitar and banjo. “He was a great kid — full of life,” she said. ”He was always picking on something and playing bluegrass.” 
 
 Diane Dudley, who knew Austin from the music library at William and Mary, said he would recount cooking the day’s spoils on hunting trips. Once he told Dudley about “recycling a picket fence and making a banjo out of it.” 
 
 “He was proud of his father,” she said. “He had told us about his parents divorcing and his father remarrying. He seemed to have a good relationship with both” parents. 
 
 Austin Deeds accompanied his father on the campaign trail in 2009, expressing admiration that the senator did not possess the stylized good looks of McDonnell. “He’s all natural, almost to a fault,” Austin told a reporter. “He colors his hair with early mornings and hard work and life.” 
 
 In 2009, police charged Austin Deeds with possession of alcohol as a minor, according to court records. The case was dismissed after he performed community service. 
 
 State Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax), a frequent advocate in Richmond for boosting mental-illness funding, said she hoped a tragedy involving one of their own would motivate her colleagues in the General Assembly to act. “God, I pray so,” Howell said. “It’s been going on now for decades, and at some point we have to put some resources in.” 
 
 In Virginia, mental-health authorities can hold people for four to six hours after a magistrate judge issues an emergency custody order. After that, a magistrate must issue a temporary detention order, or TDO, to allow an individual to be held for 48 to 72 hours for further evaluation and treatment. But the order cannot be issued without an available bed. 
 
 In 2012, the Virginia Office of the State Inspector General probed how often clinically necessary TDOs are not issued because no facility is available to accept the patient. Over a 90-day period, the office found that 72 people were turned away despite the fact that they met the criteria to be involuntarily held for treatment. 
 
 While representing just a small number of the 5,000 TDOs issued during the time period, the office still warned about the dangers of turning away, for lack of resources, people found in need of immediate detention. 
 
 The elder Deeds is known as a measured lawmaker in Richmond, where he has served since 1991. “I don’t believe a lot gets done by screaming from the mountaintops about something,” Deeds said during a 2009 interview, describing his political style. 
 
 Deeds ran for attorney general in 2005, losing to McDonnell by a mere 360 votes. He ran for governor in 2009, winning the Democratic primary in an upset victory over McAuliffe and Brian Moran — but losing by a landslide, 17 points, to McDonnell in the general election. 
 
 On the campaign trail, Deeds was known for his informal charm, often tweeting the songs he was listening to on the road, including tunes by the Grateful Dead and the Band. 
 
 Anne Adams, the publisher of the Recorder newspaper in nearby Monterey, Va., described Deeds as an “integral part of this community” who is “well loved and well respected by everyone in the area.” 
 
 
 
 Deeds was depressed after losing the gubernatorial race, she said. But he had seemed to rebound. “Recently, he’s probably been happier than I’d seen him in a long time,” she said. 
 
 After the shootings at Virginia Tech, Deeds said the tragedy had brought a fresh “urgency” to the cause of improving the state’s mental-health system. 
 
 The issue remained important to him. Only last week, his Facebook page linked to a New York Times article about flaws in the nation’s system for treating children and adolescents with mental-health problems. 
 
 Jennifer Jenkins, Justin Jouvenal, Ben Pershing, Ian Shapira and Laura Vozzella contributed to this report. ||||| In a possible attempted murder and suicide, Virginia state senator Creigh Deeds was hospitalized on Tuesday with multiple stab wounds and his 24-year-old son was found fatally shot, police said. 
 
 “We’re still piecing together the exact circumstances that led up to the altercation and then followed afterwards, but based on the evidence we have right now, we are looking into this as an attempted murder and suicide,” said Corrine Geller, spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police. “Now this is not an absolute determination because it is still very much an ongoing investigation, but we are looking at that at this point.” 
 
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 Deeds and his son, Gus, 24 years old, “had an altercation” and were the only people in Deeds’ house at the time of the violence, Geller said. 
 
 Gus Deeds “was found inside the residence suffering from life threatening injuries associated with a gunshot wound” and “died at the scene,” the police spokeswoman said. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Pols, pundits show Deeds support on Twitter) 
 
 Creigh Deeds, who suffered multiple stab wounds to the head and upper body, has been upgraded to fair condition, after being listed critical condition when he first arrived at the University of Virgina Medical Center. 
 
 Geller said investigators “recovered a firearm” at the scene, but would not say what type or who owned it. 
 
 Gus Deeds underwent a mental health evaluation at Bath County Hospital on Monday, performed under an emergency custody order, according to a report by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. However, he was not admitted to a facility because no psychiatric bed could be located across a wide area of western Virginia, the paper said. 
 
 An update posted to Virginia State Police Department’s Facebook page detailed the scene following the assault. 
 
 “After the stabbing, Senator Deeds left the scene on foot and walked down the hill of his residence to Route 42,” according to the update. 
 
 The senator was “spotted and picked up by a cousin who was driving along Route 42. The two drove to the cousin’s residence where the 911 call was placed to the sheriff’s office.” 
 
 Deeds was then transported by ambulance to a nearby relative’s farm before being airlifted to UVA Medical Center. 
 
 Creigh Deeds “has made some statements” and was able to talk to law enforcement officials at the scene and at the hospital, Geller said. 
 
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 Deeds, 55, was the Democratic nominee for attorney general in 2005 and for governor in 2009. He was beaten in both those contests by Bob McDonnell, the current governor. 
 
 Deeds and his first wife have four children, including Gus, and were divorced in 2010. He remarried last year. 
 
 Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in a statement urged Virginians to join in prayers for Deeds’ “full and complete recovery.” 
 
 “In this tough and sad time, our thoughts and prayers are with the Deeds family. The news from this morning is utterly heartbreaking,” McDonnell said. 
 
 The governor also praised Deeds as “an exceptional and committed public servant” who “cares deeply about Virginia, and the people of Virginia care deeply for him.” 
 
 The College of William & Mary, where Gus Deeds was a student since 2007 before withdrawing last month, also released a statement, saying, “William & Mary is very saddened to hear this tragic news. Gus Deeds was a member of the William & Mary community…Our hearts go out to the entire Deeds family.” 
 
 As news broke, other politicians from across Virginia, as well as nationwide, took to Twitter to send their thoughts and prayers to the senator and his family. 
 
 Thinking and praying for Creigh Deeds and his entire family. He’s a great man and public servant.— D Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) November 19, 2013 
 
 Stunning news from Bath County. I am praying for @CreighDeeds and his family at this very, very difficult time.— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) November 19, 2013 
 
 Thoughts and prayers are with @CreighDeeds and his family. A dedicated public servant.— Gerry Connolly (@GerryConnolly) November 19, 2013 
 
 My thoughts and prayers for @CreighDeeds and the Deeds family.— Jim Moran (@Jim_Moran) November 19, 2013 
 
 Dorothy and I are praying for the Deeds family at this difficult time. -tm— Terry McAuliffe (@TerryMcAuliffe) November 19, 2013 
 
 CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated when Deeds divorced from his first wife. It was 2010.
– Virginia State Police are still attempting to piece together exactly what happened at state Sen. Creigh Deeds' residence yesterday, but have confirmed that they "are looking at this as an attempted murder and suicide." The Times-Dispatch elaborates on its report on the mental health evaluation son Gus Deeds underwent on Monday, reporting that the exam occurred at Bath Community Hospital, and that the 24-year-old was indeed released due to the lack of an available bed—though the search for one covered a broad section of western Virginia. The director of the board that oversees the state's mental-health services explains to the Washington Post, "I can tell you right now, it was multiple hospitals that they called. That is a very rural area. The hospitals are few and far between." More updates: And then there's this, from the Post: Creigh Deeds last week posted to his Facebook page a New York Times article about shortcomings in how our country cares for young people with mental-health issues. The Post notes that, six years after the massacre at Virginia Tech, the state is still struggling to adequately fund its mental-health system. Police say the elder Deeds, who was yesterday afternoon upgraded to fair condition, was stabbed near a barn on the property, reports the Daily Progress. He walked about 225 feet down a steep gravel driveway to the road after being attacked, where he was spotted by a cousin driving by; it's unclear if the cousin had been contacted. Gus lived at that home along with Deeds' second wife, Siobhan; the two married last year, and she was not home during the incident. The Post notes that the couple had returned to Virginia on Friday from a week-long European vacation, per Siobhan's Facebook page. Deeds had four children from his first marriage; Gus was his only son. Politico notes that a firearm was found at the scene, but police aren't yet saying who it belonged to or what type it is. Meanwhile, friends and classmates are stunned, and recall Gus not as troubled, but as an "exuberant and talented musician" who worked hard to make people smile, reports the Times-Dispatch. But the music major had withdrawn from William & Mary about a month ago, and his academic adviser notes that he had left school on a prior occasion due to some kind of issue. Brian Hulse says it was his understanding that Deeds got some sort of religious support that gave him "structure or whatever he needed to come back to school."