Arizona Boot Camp Director Arrested
By ALISA BLACKWOOD
Associated Press Writer
February 15, 2002, 6:14 PM EST
PHOENIX -- The director of a boot camp for troubled youngsters was arrested on murder and child-abuse charges Friday in the death of a teen-age camper who collapsed in 111-degree heat last summer.
Charles Long II (left) and Ray Anderson are charged in the death of Tony Haynes.
Charles Long II, 56, was also charged with aggravated assault for allegedly pulling a knife on a camper, and marijuana possession, for a quarter-pound of the drug found in his bedroom closet.
The second-degree murder charge was filed over the death of 14-year-old Anthony Haynes. He died July 1 while attending a five-week boot camp operated by the America's Buffalo Soldiers Re-enactors Association.
The medical examiner's office said Haynes died of complications from dehydration and near-drowning -- dehydration after being made to stand in the sun for up to five hours, the near-drowning from being left in a motel bathtub, where he had been taken to cool him off.
Two other boot camp staffers also were arrested Friday. Camp sergeant Ray Anderson, 39, was charged with child abuse for allegedly spanking, stomping, beating and whipping more than 14 children. He was also accused of denying them water or shade in the heat.
...
[The detail not mentioned in this article is that the other staffer, whose name the Sheriff did not release, was actually a 17-year-old boy. He was an assistant staffer, recruited from among the "old-comer" prisoners. He was the one who was in direct command of Anthony Haynes when he died. He was the slave-driver who forced Anthony to stand in the sun until he died. The camp sure trained those kids well, didn't it?]
...
The camp began operating in 2001 and was closed down by the sheriff's office July 2 after Haynes' death. Investigators said the camp's regimen included forced marches, black uniforms in triple-digit temperatures, harsh discipline and a daily diet limited to an apple, a carrot and a bowl of beans.
-- From the wires of The Associated Press. Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press
What the article doesn't say is that Anthony Haynes' death was actually worse than described -- he was slowly tortured to death over a period of several days. Only when he was obviously dying did the staff take him to a motel and try to cool him off. And then, as if that weren't enough, when the bathtub full of cold water that he nearly drowned in didn't revive Anthony Haynes, Charles Long declared that Anthony was faking it and ordered that he be brought back to the camp, not taken to a hospital...
FYI: All of those temperatures that they tell you, like "111-degree heat", are measured in the shade. When you are hiking in the blazing desert summer sun, the temperature is much hotter. And standing in the sun in a black uniform for hours is crazy, simply insane. That will cook you to death. And then denying the kid drinking water guarantees death.
Earlier, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio had called what happened at Long's camp "organized torture towards children."
Some children in the summer program now say they were punched, kicked and forced to eat dirt for minor infractions such as failing to stand up straight. Campers say they had bruised ribs from an exercise in which they were ordered to lie on their backs while counselors ran across their chests in boots.
"We were thrashed around, kicked, punched," said David Mandraes, 17, of Peoria, even though "nobody had done anything wrong." In addition to closed-fist punches, he and other camp participants were "elbowed, kneed, anything you can think of, they did it," he said.
One 13-year-old girl camper says females faced additional harassment, and that counselors (who liked to be addressed as "sergeant") called her "whore" and "prostitute." "They asked me how much I charged," she said.
One participant in the camp near Buckeye, Justin Boe, 16, of Phoenix, said drill instructors sometimes forced campers to lie on their backs "in the cockroach position," with their arms and legs in the air at 90-degree angles. Boe said the instructors would then stomp the campers' chests and pour mud on them, forcing them to swallow it. "Every time I closed my mouth, he (one instructor) told me, 'Open it!'" Boe said. "He would start stomping harder. Even if I spit out dirt, he told me to swallow. After, I was coughing up rocks for about four hours."
Sheriff Arpaio called the allegations "horrific" and shut down the camp. He also launched parallel investigations, one into the death of Tony Haynes, which he described as "suspicious," and the other into allegations of abuse at the camp. "Why would you take somebody who may be sick to a hotel and then bring that person back?" Arpaio asked. "These are questions we have to find out."
Bill Lanford, who led paramedics to the camp in a futile attempt to save the life of Anthony Haynes, said that many of the children were crying when they arrived. He said: "It was very disturbing. We were working and the counselors were more interested in disciplining the kids."
In an editorial, July 7, 2001, The Arizona Republic newspaper commented:
You need not endure the horrific stories of kids being forced to eat dirt, of kids being beaten, kicked and shackled to each other through the night, to recognize that a bizarre madness reigned at the American Buffalo Soldier camp near Buckeye.
You wouldn't even have had to know that 14-year-old Tony Haynes died at the camp last Sunday, thrashing in agony in 112-degree heat, likely of dehydration and exposure.
Rather, the fact of the camp's very existence is evidence enough of unrestrained lunacy. Why were 45 kids ages 7 to 17 even out there in the blistering Arizona heat, scarcely supervised and with virtually no refuge from the elements and little nourishment?
The answer simply is that there was no oversight of this "tough love" abomination. There was no one to tell "Colonel" Chuck Long, the camp's operator, that he wasn't exercising "tough love." He was exercising sadistic brutality.
::bangin::
