A psycho who has threatened to kill pop diva Whitney Houston’s daughter escaped from a Bronx hospital, sparking an 11-hour manhunt that ended when the woman’s sister turned her in, police said yesterday.
Announcing “I’m leaving,” 35-year-old Desiree Weeks, a patient at the Bronx Psychiatric Center, turned and walked away from two social workers who had taken her to St. Barnabas Hospital for tests Friday afternoon.
“She just flat walked out,” said one flabbergasted law-enforcement source.
“She says, ‘I’m leaving.’ and they never tried to stop her. I can’t say I blame them. They’re not security, but they shouldn’t have sent her there in the first place with just social workers.”
Weeks, who believes the Grammy-winning Houston is her “reincarnated mother,” went to Manhattan and made a phone call to her sister, Dawn Simmons, in The Bronx, police said.
When Weeks showed up at Simmons’ apartment at 1:50 a.m. yesterday, the sister called the cops.
Police consider Weeks a threat, and her escape so jolted Houston’s head of security that he flew to New York from North Carolina.
Houston got an order of protection against Weeks last March.
Weeks also wrote rambling letters to the singer’s management company, threatening to kill Houston’s 7-year-old daughter, Bobbi, law-enforcement sources said.
In the letters, Weeks claimed to be Bobbi’s sister and said she was jealous of her, the sources said.
At the Bronx Psychiatric Center, Weeks only talks about Whitney and Bobbi and wants to be known as “King Houston,” the sources said.
The sources said Weeks is psychotic and delusional and has to be force-fed her medicine.
“She’s so psychotic, she thinks she’s one of the Houstons,” one source said.
In 1993, Weeks was arrested for violating an order of protection taken out by another woman.
In 1996, she was arrested after burglarizing the home of an 80-year-old Bronx woman. She was sent to jail and ultimately transferred to Bronx Psychiatric.
Houston, who lives in a guarded compound in Mendham Township, N.J., with husband Bobby Brown, has had two dozen stalkers – including a couple from Germany, two people in mental hospitals and others who are monitored by her security detail.
Law-enforcement sources ripped security at the 360-bed psychiatric hospital, noting that 100 patients had escaped during the past year.
“There is a lack of security, a lack of any knowledge of security,” said a law-enforcement source. “Eventually one of these guys is going to get out and kill somebody.”
Roger Klingman, a spokesman for the state Office of Mental Hygiene, which oversees the hospital, claimed Weeks bolted from two health-care workers and they chased her, but couldn’t catch her.
He said a thorough investigation would be conducted because “public safety is a paramount priority.”