Carlisle Man, 21, Tried to Break Roxbury Staffer's Arm to Land in Jail, Police Say

A 21-year-old patient at Roxbury Treatment Center broke free of his restraints and tried to hyperextend a staff member's arm badly enough to break it, according to Pennsylvania State Police, who say the man later admitted he did it because he wanted to go to jail. Sawyer Elliott Andrews, of Carlisle, now faces felony aggravated assault against a designated individual, along with misdemeanor assault and a harassment citation.

State police were dispatched to the Southampton Township facility on Sunday after receiving a report of an assault between two people, as reported by Tri-State Alert. Investigators say the altercation began while a Roxbury staff member was attempting to administer medications to Andrews, who broke free of his restraints and got into a physical struggle with the employee.

According to the outlet's report, Andrews was unable to actually break the victim's arm, though the woman was left with red marks. Police say Andrews told them directly that he intentionally tried to break the victim's left arm because he wanted to go to jail.

A Felony Charge Rooted in a 2020 State Law

The felony aggravated assault charge against Andrews stems from Pennsylvania's Act 51 of 2020, which designated health care practitioners and technicians as protected individuals under the state's aggravated assault statute, according to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Under that law, even an attempt to cause bodily injury to a protected medical worker can be charged as felony-grade aggravated assault rather than a lesser misdemeanor offense.

The case, filed under incident number PA 2026-1067003, was lodged in Franklin County Magisterial District Court 39-3-04, the court that covers Southampton Township and is presided over by Magisterial District Judge Kristin D. Nicklas, per Franklin County Government records. The criminal complaint is listed under docket number MJ-39304-CR-0000197-2026.

Andrews failed to post $15,000 bail and remains incarcerated at the Franklin County Jail, a county correctional facility on Opportunity Avenue in Chambersburg where defendants held on monetary bail from Southampton Township cases are typically detained.

Inside a State-Licensed Crisis Facility

Roxbury Treatment Center is a 112-bed private psychiatric and behavioral health hospital on a 26-acre campus near Shippensburg, owned and operated by a subsidiary of Universal Health Services, according to the company's own job listings hosted by Universal Health Services. The facility is licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health's Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Programs and Office of Mental Health to provide 24-hour acute inpatient crisis stabilization, medical detoxification, and substance abuse treatment.

Andrews's stated motive for the assault, that he wanted to go to jail, echoes a pattern documented in criminological research on the intersection of mental illness and the justice system. Studies compiled by the National Institutes of Health describe how individuals in severe psychiatric crisis, or those lacking adequate social support, sometimes intentionally commit offenses specifically to enter detention facilities, effectively treating jail as a de facto safety net when community mental health resources fall short.

A Broader Pattern of Violence Against Health Workers

The incident at Roxbury also lands within a well-documented national trend of violence against clinical staff. Federal data for 2021 and 2022 show that healthcare and social assistance workers accounted for 72.8 percent of all nonfatal workplace violence injuries requiring days away from work across private industry, an annualized rate of 14.2 cases per 10,000 full-time workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Psychiatric and substance abuse hospitals specifically face a nonfatal occupational injury rate of 6.3 per 100 full-time workers, notably higher than the 5.1 per 100 rate at general medical and surgical hospitals, per the Healthcare Workforce Coalition's analysis of the same federal data.

That violence carries a steep financial toll industry-wide. A study conducted for the American Hospital Association estimated that workplace and community violence cost U.S. hospitals $18.27 billion in 2023 alone, factoring in security infrastructure, workers' compensation claims, and the cost of staff recruitment and retention. In response, federal lawmakers have introduced the bipartisan Safety from Violence for Healthcare Employees Act, which would establish federal criminal penalties for violent acts and intimidation targeting healthcare workers, a protection professional healthcare organizations have compared to existing federal laws covering airline crews.

It remains unclear whether Andrews will undergo a court-ordered psychiatric competency evaluation before his case proceeds further in Magisterial District Court 39-3-04, or what specific restraint protocols were in place at Roxbury during the medication administration that preceded the struggle.