State mental health officials plan to meet with representatives from the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic to discuss the state's latest investigation of serious incidents involving former Mayview State Hospital patients and other local residents receiving community mental health services.

Western Psychiatric provided services to the subject of the most recent probe, a man arrested in a Pittsburgh death, officials said yesterday. They declined to identify that person, citing confidentiality concerns, but acknowledged the investigation was opened one day after Shadyside resident Terrence Andrews was arrested for the stabbing death last month of 18-year-old Lisa Maas.

At Mr. Andrews' preliminary hearing yesterday on homicide and burglary charges, Pittsburgh Police Detective Timothy Rush testified that minutes after the May 29 killing, Mr. Andrews told police he'd been in and out of Western Psychiatric "37 times in the past 10 years."

Officials said eight serious incidents, known as "sentinel events," have triggered investigations since the state announced in August that it plans to close Mayview by the end of this year. Five sentinel events have been investigated since January and three others occurred earlier.

One incident involved a person who set a fire at a Washington County group home and had not been a patient at Mayview, officials said. The other seven sentinel event investigations involved four former Mayview patients who died and three others who were arrested.

David Jones, project manager for the Mayview closure process, said the state has begun analyzing the latest sentinel event and developed preliminary recommendations. They will be reviewed among state mental health officials, then shared at a joint meeting with Western Psychiatric and county mental health officials.

Megan Grote Quatrini, a spokeswoman for Western Psychiatric, said officials there had no comment.

One issue raised by the latest sentinel event investigation, state officials said, is how to better engage someone who might have disconnected to some extent from community mental health services.

"We need to make sure they can easily reconnect and get the services they need," said Joan Erney, deputy secretary of the state Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.

Mr. Andrews, 38, told police that he had informed his doctors repeatedly that "he was thinking about killing someone," Mr. Rush testified at the preliminary hearing. In a statement to police earlier, Mr. Andrews mentioned "the medication wasn't working."

He told police he had seen Ms. Maas, a student at the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute whom he did not know by name, earlier on May 29 in the hallway and "she told him he smelled. That burned him up," Mr. Rush said.

Both lived on the fourth floor of the Hampshire Hall apartments at 4730 Centre Ave.

Mr. Andrews waited for her to come home that night, and when she did, he took scissors from his desk and knocked on her door, police said. When she answered, he began stabbing at her.

He told police that after he overpowered her, he covered her mouth until she died.

He was held for trial and is scheduled for a formal arraignment Aug. 1.

After announcing Mayview would be closed, the state made the decision to probe sentinel events not only involving former Mayview patients, but others receiving community mental health services in an effort to improve care, Ms. Erney said.

"We should be really vigilant," she said. "We want to understand what happened and make changes.

"We've learned from each one," she said of the sentinel event investigations.

Mr. Jones said plans call for improving mobile outreach services next month and adding crisis residential services in August or September to help stabilize local residents who are experiencing mental health problems.

The state called a two-week halt to discharges from Mayview late last year after the death of a former patient in a plunge from the Birmingham Bridge.

Authorities believe Anthony Fallert, who had schizophrenia, walked away from a community mental health program operated by Mercy Behavioral Health on the South Side on Oct. 29 and jumped or fell from the Birmingham Bridge.

His body was pulled from the Monongahela River Nov. 5.

A sentinel event investigation also occurred following the death late last year of another ex-patient, Ahson J. Abdullah, 58. He was fatally injured when he was struck by a train near his home in Braddock. Mr. Abdullah had been a patient in Mayview's forensic unit, which provides evaluation and treatment for people in the criminal justice system.