:flame: Posted on Mon, Sep. 13, 2004
Girl, 12, dies in group home in Charlotte
Police say she stopped breathing after employee restrained her
KYTJA WEIR
Staff Writer
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are investigating the death of a 12-year-old girl who died Saturday night in a group home for troubled children in southwest Charlotte.
Police said in a report that the girl stopped breathing after an employee at the Covenant Group Home restrained her for being unruly and violent. Police declined to comment on the case Sunday except to say the case remained a death investigation. Police Capt. Keith Dinkins said investigators would likely call for an autopsy.
Though it remains unclear what caused the girl's death, neighbors said they've worried about the group home on Snow Creek Lane for years and have tried to convince state officials to shut it down.
Police released no information on the girl, but police reports said she'd been placed at the home by the Buncombe County Department of Social Services. Mandy Stone, Buncombe County's DSS director, said she can't comment on any cases but added she wasn't aware of her agency's having a relationship with Covenant Group Home. She said the home is a mental health group home and it isn't licensed by DSS. Covenant Group Homes Inc. could not be reached. A woman at the home Sunday afternoon said she would not comment. Police withheld the girl's name Sunday.
It's unclear where Covenant Group Home, a private business, fits into the web of child welfare services, or how the 12-year-old girl ended up in the home for troubled youth.
Neighbors don't recall seeing the girl before, but in interviews with the Observer, some said they knew something more serious was wrong Saturday.
A bit before 9 p.m., Mervin Dancy, 53, said he was talking on the phone when he heard a loud pounding on his door. A voice said it was the woman from across the street and she needed help, Dancy said.
He opened the door and saw a woman with a young girl by her side.
"She said, there's a little girl over here that's stopped breathing," Dancy recalled. She asked him to call 911 because her cell phone battery had died, he said.
David Monks, 39, who lives next to the group home, ran outside after an ambulance arrived and said he saw paramedics roll out a girl on a stretcher, giving her CPR.
The girl was pronounced dead at Carolinas Medical Center by 10 p.m., police reports show.
The home had attracted police calls before, neighbors said. Neighbors say they have tracked more than 40 police calls to the home between 2000 and 2002, ranging from suicide attempts to fights to missing kids.
At times, the kids knocked on neighbors' doors asking them to call 911, Monks said.
Monks gathered his neighbors' data and two years ago took it to any authority he could -- the home's owner, police, Mecklenburg DSS and even the governor's office, he said.
"Somebody's going to end up dead before something is done," Monks said he told state officials about the home.
But he said DSS officials told him they couldn't close the home down. "Once you get a license, something really bad has to happen," he said.
In recent years, other children in the region have died after being restrained at group homes for troubled kids.
In March 1999, 9-year-old Timithy Thomas died after suffocating while being restrained at a Banner Elk charter school associated with a group home where he lived.
A year later, Sabrina Day, 15, died after staff restrained her at My Brother's House, a home for troubled teens in Charlotte.
The Observer showed last year that at least 119 children whom social workers tried to protect have died in suspected abuse and neglect cases in North Carolina since 1998.
The N.C. General Assembly responded this summer by allocating an additional $5 million to hire more social workers. -- STAFF WRITER ERIC FRAZIER CONTRIBUTED TO THIS STORY.
-- KYTJA WEIR: (704) 868-7741;
[email protected]