At first, it was a story good for a laugh. The sign language interpreter at the memorial service for South Africa’s Nelson Mandela was tagged a “fake” for using incomprehensible hand gestures. But as the story unfolded, it became a much more serious event.

The interpreter isn’t a fake. He’s a schizophrenic with a violent past who was suffering from hallucinations and struggling not to panic on stage because he was freaked out by all the security guards around him carrying guns. On the day of the memorial, he was scheduled for a psychiatric evaluation to measure the effectiveness of his anti-psychotic medication and determine if he needed to again be institutionalized.

For several hours, the interpreter stood a few feet away from many of the world’s most powerful political leaders.

The South African government acknowledged “a mistake happened” but still doesn’t know how. Officials have tried to find the company who hire the interpreter, but the owners “have vanished into thin air.”

Before the memorial service, there was much apprehension over whether South African security was up to the task. Now we know how justified those fears were.

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