A man who was watching a toddler at a west Charlotte motel beat the 23-month-old to death, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Tiffany Wright stood alone in the dark, waiting for her school bus.

It was just before 6 a.m., and her foster grandmother had walked back home to get Tiffany’s water bottle.

Tiffany, 15, was eight months pregnant but determined to stay on track in school. She wanted to be a lawyer. And after just a few weeks at Hawthorne High, she had impressed teachers as smart and ambitious, despite a difficult childhood.

At 5:51, Tiffany sent a text.

“Wheres the bus?”

One stop away, replied her friend, already on the bus.

At 5:55, as the bus lumbered toward Tiffany’s stop, people began calling police to report gunshots.

A school bus dispatcher radioed Tiffany’s bus driver: Change course – something’s happening ahead.

Tiffany lay dead in the road, shot in the head, that morning, Monday, Sept. 14. Her baby girl was delivered at the hospital and lived a week, but died Sunday.

Nobody’s charged in the killings, but police call Tiffany’s adoptive brother, Royce Mitchell, a “person of interest.”

In the months before she died, local agencies took steps aimed at stabilizing her home life and keeping her safe. But her story exposes failures in the system that was supposed to protect her.

Among the missteps:

•In February, a Mecklenburg court clerk appointed Mitchell as Tiffany’s temporary guardian — even though he was a felon who served time in federal prison. He was also tried in 2006 for murder, but found not guilty. And last year, he was accused of domestic violence, though the case was dismissed.

•In July, social workers told police that Mitchell, 36, might have committed statutory rape with Tiffany, but police didn’t question him about it for seven weeks, and didn’t charge him with the rape until after Tiffany was killed.

•This month, Mecklenburg social services failed to cut off communication between Tiffany, who was in foster care, and Mitchell, said a source close to the investigation.

On the day of Tiffany’s killing, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police jailed Mitchell for statutory rape and indecent liberties with a child, naming Tiffany as the victim.

Police defend their work, saying they followed the industry’s best practices – which takes time. Police didn’t feel a need to rush, they say, because they believed Tiffany was secure, hidden in a foster home with no threat to her safety.

Police say it’s hard to prove statutory rape: Of the 262 reports of statutory rape police received over three years, only 16 percent – 42 cases – were accepted by prosecutors.

Experts say statutory rape cases are complicated because they involve victims ages 13, 14 or 15 who often consider themselves voluntary participants in sex with someone at least six years older. So victims can be reluctant to help police.

But child advocates say in cases like Tiffany’s, police should act more aggressively. An immediate arrest sends a signal to a suspect and can persuade them to stay away from victims.

“The cases may be difficult to win, but they’re not difficult to charge,” says Brett Loftis of Charlotte’s Council for Children’s Rights.

UNCC criminologist Paul Friday says: “Often, nothing is done in these kinds of cases because they’re based on improper assumptions about the rationality of someone that age. But the minors are often unaware of disease, birth control and they can be exploited by someone.”

Adopted by foster mother

Tiffany first entered the child welfare system as a toddler in Buffalo, N.Y., when her mother lost custody.

She was adopted at 4 by her foster mother, Alma Wright, an older woman with eight grown children, who was excited about raising another child.

One of Wright’s grown sons was Royce Mitchell, a star quarterback in high school who’d gone on to play for a semi-pro team in Buffalo. But Mitchell also was indicted in 1999 as part of a drug trafficking ring and went to federal prison.

While he was in prison, authorities also charged Mitchell with an earlier murder, but a jury found him not guilty.

In 2004, Alma and Tiffany left Buffalo for North Carolina, settling near Kings Mountain. Tiffany made friends easily at school and church. She ran track at Bessemer City High School.

In 2007, Mitchell was released from prison and followed his mother to North Carolina.

But last fall, Alma Wright got sick. Friends at church helped out with Tiffany, inviting her for dinners and weekends. Tiffany spent time with Mitchell and his wife, too.

Alma Wright died Jan. 25, and Tiffany moved in with the Mitchells in Charlotte.

On Jan. 30, Royce Mitchell asked a Mecklenburg court to appoint him and his wife as Tiffany’s guardians.

On his application, he wrote: “We are seeking guardianship because we were requested to do so by Mrs. Alma Wright before she died.”

He wanted to transfer Tiffany to West Mecklenburg High School.

The court set a hearing for Feb. 5 and appointed a child advocate to study the situation and look after Tiffany’s best interests in court.

There’s no transcript of what happened in court, and the clerk who handled Tiffany’s case declined to discuss his decision.

Frederick Benson, a Mecklenburg assistant clerk of superior court, appointed Mitchell the temporary guardian of Tiffany’s welfare.

It’s unclear if Benson, a lawyer, knew about Mitchell’s criminal background. Court clerks are not required to perform background checks in guardianship cases, says Clerk of Superior Court Martha Curran. It’s up to each clerk to decide what checks are necessary, and they often rely on court-appointed child advocates to advise them in such cases.

Tiffany’s advocate, lawyer Martha Efird, declined to discuss her actions in the case.

It was in the weeks surrounding the Feb. 5 court hearing that Tiffany got pregnant, if hospital estimates are accurate.

But friends say Tiffany, who started at West Mecklenburg High in February, wouldn’t realize for four or five months that she was pregnant.

On Feb. 27, clerk of court Benson ordered DSS to conduct a “home study” of the Mitchell household. Officials won’t release their findings.

But Mitchell didn’t keep custody long, according to several of Tiffany’s friends in King’s Mountain.

In late March, Mitchell left Tiffany at a group home called With Friends in Gastonia, according to Marlene Jefferies and Cruceta Jeffeirs, two adult family friends who watched Tiffany grow up.

The group home wouldn’t confirm that. But the friends say the home reported to social services that Tiffany was abandoned. And she was soon back in foster care.

On March 31, Jeffeirs, a Shelby pastor, wrote a letter to Benson seeking custody of Tiffany: “My desire is to see Tiffany accomplish all the goals that she has set for herself and I believe she can do that in a stable environment with lots of guidance and love.”

DSS officials in Gaston and Mecklenburg won’t discuss Tiffany’s case or answer questions about what steps they took to protect her.

But friends and family say Tiffany was eventually placed in the care of foster parent Susan Barber, in a townhome off Mallard Creek Road in Derita.

By July, it was clear Tiffany was pregnant, friends say.

Barber tried to shield Tiffany from talking to those she believed might be bad influences, according to Tiffany’s cousin Brittany Page. But a source close to the investigation said Tiffany and Mitchell continued communicating.

Despite repeated attempts, Barber could not be reached.

As the school year approached, Tiffany prepared to change schools again, this time to Hawthorne High in Charlotte, which offers a special program for pregnant students.

Delayed investigation

On July 27, social workers reported to police that Royce Mitchell might have committed statutory rape with Tiffany.

It took eight days for a detective to look at the case, and three days more for it to be officially assigned to Teresa Johnson, a detective with CMPD’s youth crime and domestic violence unit.

Another 12 days passed before Johnson interviewed Tiffany.

It’s unclear when detective Johnson discovered Mitchell’s background, but it wasn’t enough to ramp up the investigation. Investigators say they believed Tiffany was safe in a foster home and faced no threats from Mitchell.

Police say their performance in the case followed procedure and met standards.

Police interview alleged victims immediately if the crime has occurred within the previous 72 hours, so they can gather evidence that may remain. But in cases like Tiffany’s – where months had elapsed since the alleged offense – police try to arrange just one interview when children and teen victims of abuse are involved.

Police acknowledge that strategy takes time but minimizes trauma and reduces the chances that young victims might be led into inaccurate testimony by repeated questioning.

Police also let such victims decide when they want to be interviewed at the county’s child-victim center called Pat’s Place. There, specially trained interviewers talk to victims, while social workers, psychologists, police and others watch from another room.

Tiffany chose an Aug. 19 interview. She didn’t say much during the formal interview. But later that day, Johnson won her trust and obtained enough information to move forward with the investigation.

No response from Mitchell

The next day, Aug. 20, the detective made her first call to Mitchell to ask him about the charge, she says. Johnson left a message and gave him a few days to call back.

When Mitchell didn’t respond, she made calls over the next two weeks to social workers and a federal probation officer to ask Mitchell to come talk to police.

Police say they didn’t immediately arrest him because they believed they could get better information if he talked voluntarily.

On Sept. 9, a federal probation official told Johnson that Mitchell was not coming in.

On Sept. 10, a team of social workers, police and other agencies held a standard follow-up meeting to discuss how to proceed in Tiffany’s case.

On Friday, Sept. 11, detective Johnson phoned Mitchell’s wife and left a message. She asked her to call back to discuss Tiffany, Johnson says, but didn’t give details of the rape allegation.

That Monday, Tiffany was shot and killed.

As emergency vehicles rolled to the scene, Tiffany’s school bus was diverted from its normal route. But the students could see flashing lights. Tiffany’s friends on the bus, Cimone Black and Tamia Corpening, began to worry.

“I kept texting her phone…,” Cimone said. Then she started calling, but all she got was voice mail.

The bus continued on to Hawthorne. For Tamia, the hourlong ride was excruciating.

Nobody said a word.

Staff writers Liz Chandler and Ely Portillo and researcher Maria David contributed.

“He says, ‘my baby just passed away.’ I was like ‘for real?’ He was crying, holding his head down,” said that neighbor.

The child was taken to Presbyterian Hospital. Staff members there told police he showed signs of physical abuse, CMPD officials said.

At that point, detectives with the Homicide and Family Services Unit began an investigation, processing the home for evidence and interviewing the infant’s parents.

On Tuesday evening, hospital staff members notified police that the infant had died.

Police said the preliminary investigation and the findings of the medical examiner gave them enough evidence to obtain a murder warrant for Durant.

Neighbors said Durant also has a 6-year-old son and appeared to be an attentive father.

“Every time I saw him, he was either up at the bus stop, making sure his kids got off the bus or I seen him walking around with them strapped to his back,” said neighbor Randy King.

King was shocked he saw the police report alleging physical abuse.

“I wouldn’t say he seemed like a parent who was abusive, or had an uneven temperament or anything like that. He seemed like he was taking care of his kids,” said King.

Neighbors said they had seen police in the apartment for the last two days and thought a criminal charge would be coming.

Durant was arrested once before for assaulting a woman two years ago.

Later that night, Makayla’s mother, who was sleeping with the child, awoke to find her dead.

Two years later, she lost another baby. She again was sleeping with her child, this time a son.

Today, no one has been charged in either case, an example of how even the mention of SIDS in an autopsy can complicate criminal investigations.

The cases were among several North Carolina infant deaths reviewed by the Observer in which law enforcement said the SIDS label discouraged them from seeking charges.

Crimes are difficult to prosecute when the possibility of SIDS is mentioned in an autopsy because it describes a natural death.

What happened to Makayla remains a mystery. Was she fatally injured in the parking lot? Did her mother, who witnesses said was drunk or high that day, unintentionally suffocate her as they slept? Or did something else kill Makayla, possibly SIDS?

Belmont police opened an investigation, suspecting homicide. When a baby is choked and then dies, “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out,” Chief David James said.

An emergency room doctor told police Makayla suffered a skull fracture, likely from being shaken, dropped or a hit on the head.

But a Gaston County medical examiner ruled the cause of death undetermined. An autopsy report says the medical examiner did not find a skull fracture and wrote the death was “consistent with SIDS.”

Police questioned Makayla’s mother and her mother’s then-boyfriend, but, after 14 months, closed the case.

Gaston County District Attorney Locke Bell declined to file charges, saying the autopsy findings left him with no medical evidence.

The second baby, 2-week-old Kaylob Dean Peek, died March 5, 2009, after sleeping in bed with his mother.

A second unexpected infant death puts law enforcement authorities on the alert for reckless behavior or potential homicide.

Just like in Makayla’s case, authorities did not pursue charges after Kaylob’s cause of death was ruled undetermined but “consistent with SIDS.”

Drug history

Accounts show Makayla’s short life was surrounded by turmoil.

In the hours before Makayla died, Joanie Hopkins and her boyfriend, Jason Michael Wilson, appeared under the influence of drugs or alcohol, according to police reports and records from the Gaston County Department of Social Services.

One woman said Hopkins acted drugged and her eyes were rolling to the back of her head. Another person said Wilson drank and took pills that day.

The behavior did not shock people who knew them. Two weeks after Makayla was born, someone called DSS to report Hopkins and Wilson had used drugs in the baby’s presence.

About the same time, friends worried about the baby’s safety because Hopkins “would be so high Makayla would fall out of the car seat,” said Margaret Thompson, Hopkins’ mother.

DSS and court records say there were allegations of domestic violence between Hopkins and Wilson.

At least two other Gaston County women have sought protective orders against Wilson, according to court records. In August, one woman claimed that Wilson threatened her and her 1-year-old daughter. She said Wilson told her, “You deserve to have me kill you and your family.”

By the throat

About 9 p.m. on June 5, 2007, the couple rode to the Kingsway convenience store in Gastonia, with Makayla in the car, a police report says.

An argument ensued.

A woman inside the store heard the commotion and went outside to see what happened. She told police she saw a man hit a woman before a bystander pulled him away. She asked not to be identified in this story for safety reasons.

The woman said she went back inside the building, but she heard screams again. When she looked outside this time, she said she saw a man “holding a baby by its throat, its feet dangled in the air.”

Another person told police Wilson came to her home later that night and gave an account of what happened in the parking lot. She said Wilson told her that he hit Hopkins in the face and “she dropped the baby on the cement.”

911 call

Hopkins told police she drove Makayla from the store to her home, arriving about 10 p.m. She said she fed Makayla a bottle, burped her and went to sleep with the infant on her chest.

About 2:30 a.m., Wilson knocked on Hopkins’ door. When Hopkins came to the door with Makayla in her arms, both Wilson and Hopkins said they noticed Makayla wasn’t breathing. They called 911.

The operator instructed the couple to start cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but “all that seemed to be happening was Jason and Joanie arguing in the background,” a report said.

Hopkins told the 911 operator differing accounts of what happened, police said. At first, she said the baby fell off the bed. She later said she was sleeping with the baby on the couch and she must have rolled over on her.

Emergency responders arrived and attempted to revive Makayla, but one rescuer said she showed signs she had been dead for an extended period of time.

‘She died of SIDS’

Hopkins said she couldn’t remember exactly what happened the night Makayla died.

When a police officer arrived, she repeatedly said “I did not drop her again.” In a later police interview, she said she “knew that Jason killed her baby, she just doesn’t know how he did it.”

Hopkins, 30, declined comment for this story.

Wilson, 29, denies that he choked Makayla or hit Hopkins at the Kingsway store.

Wilson told police he was trying to leave her car when Hopkins began screaming and confronting him. Wilson said he pushed her away and left.

Contacted by the Observer, Wilson yelled and threatened a reporter. “She died of SIDS,” he said.

His father, Eddie Wilson, said his family has tried to move past the tragedy. Eddie Wilson said Jason Wilson was trying to help Makayla the night she died. “He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Asked about the allegations his son was seen choking the infant, he said, “If that were true, wouldn’t he be charged?”

Case closed

The district attorney’s office would not pursue charges. Belmont police closed the case Oct. 30, 2008, more than a year after Makayla died.

James, the department’s chief, said the medical examiner’s findings derailed the investigation. He said he complained about the findings to Dr. John Butts, the state’s chief medical examiner.

Butts said he does not recall receiving the complaint.

James said he is upset because a Gaston Memorial Hospital emergency room doctor said preliminary X-rays showed Makayla had suffered a skull fracture.

A radiologist’s review said “there was a suggestion of a depressed skull fracture” and asked for more studies, but they were never done, the autopsy report says.

The autopsy performed by Dr. Peter Wittenberg in Gaston County found no skull fracture.

Wittenberg referred questions to Butts, who is responsible for overseeing medical examiners statewide.

In an interview with the Observer, Butts dismissed the possibility Makayla suffered a skull fracture, saying the hospital must have interpreted the X-rays wrong. He said he sees no reason to review the X-ray.

An autopsy is far more accurate than an X-ray, he said. “In an autopsy you hold the bone in your hands,” Butts said. “An X-ray, you are looking at shadows.”

Butts added that during an autopsy, “if there’s a fracture, you can’t miss it.”

He said the medical examiner wrote that Makayla’s death was “consistent with SIDS” because the autopsy revealed no explanation for the death. Butts said it was classified undetermined based on the circumstances surrounding the death.

The ruling means the autopsy did not find evidence linking the baby’s death to the alleged choking, Butts said.

“If you cannot connect the two, how can you get up in court and testify this child is [dead] because someone maltreated them a few hours before, but somehow didn’t produce any marks?” he asked. “Your position is indefensible.”

But Chris Hendricks, a Gaston EMS operations supervisor, sat on an expert panel that reviewed the case and issued a report detailing how police, doctors, DSS and others performed their roles.

“There are too many questions for it just to be a SIDS case,” Hendricks said.

The panel found that “all resources available to the local Medical Examiner were not thoroughly utilized.” They said “local law enforcement did not communicate all relevant scene/investigative findings to the local Medical Examiner.”

The report also said Hopkins had been warned about the danger of bed-sharing the infants, which has been identified as a risk for suffocation.

No prosecution

Bell, the Gaston County district attorney, said there is not enough evidence to convict anyone in Makayla’s death. He said he had anticipated the autopsy would show different results.

Bell said he considered filing lesser charges against Wilson, but decided he was not going to “put the mother through the suffering,” he said.

Thompson, Makayla’s grandmother, said she has tried to work with police but investigators tell her they share her frustration with Bell’s stance.

She said an officer from the Gaston County Police told her that he met with Bell and Gaston County DSS to present evidence that shows connections between the deaths of the two babies.

Few details are publicly available in the death of the second baby, Kaylob.

An autopsy said Hopkins fed him in the middle of the night. “The mother took the infant to bed with her. In the morning, mother found the infant cold and dead,” the report says.

Gaston County Police Sgt. Steve Dover said police found no indication of foul play, but the investigating officer “didn’t like the determination of SIDS. It bothered him that it was the second child” who died.

A report from the expert panel that reviews such cases is not yet available, a state spokeswoman said.

Bell said he reviewed the cases with police but authorities found no evidence of a link.

The medical examiner’s ruling influenced his decision not to pursue charges in both cases, Bell said. “The doctor says it’s consistent with SIDS, so we have no evidence to show it wasn’t SIDS,” he said. “You can’t prosecute on what you suspect.”

A grandmother’s grief

Thompson said she doesn’t believe her grandchildren died from natural causes. What sticks in her mind is the mention of SIDS in the autopsies.

“Two little babies dying with SIDS is almost impossible,” she said.

On a recent day, Thompson visited Evergreen cemetery in Belmont, where Makayla and Kaylob are buried in adjacent graves. Grass obscures the tiny 7-inch-wide grave markers bearing their names, dates of birth and dates of death.

Thompson said she wanted to purchase tombstones for her grandchildren but was told she would need consent from Hopkins. She said Hopkins rarely speaks to her.

The grandmother recounted the events surrounding Makayla’s death and one of her last conversations with her daughter. Tears streamed down her face as she recalled how Makayla seldom cried.

“I don’t want to sound redundant,” Thompson said, “but I am just amazed they didn’t file charges.”

In Memory of Austen Blake Minter II and Serenity Tyvon Minter

Police seek answers as family mourns mom, kids slain in murder-suicide

Jan. 3, 1992: Danieal Kelly is born in Youngstown, Ohio, the daughter of Andrea and Daniel Kelly. Danieal, who has cerebral palsy, is the third of 10 children born to Andrea Kelly by five fathers.

1994: Daniel and Andrea Kelly separate. Andrea Kelly moves with her children to Philadelphia.

1995: Daniel Kelly takes Danieal and a son, Daniel, to Pittsburgh after he hears their mother is not taking care of them. In an interview, the father says the two children had rotting teeth and had not been to a doctor in years. He and the children later move to Arizona.

1997: In Philadelphia, the Department of Human Services opens its first investigation into the Andrea Kelly family. A report says Danieal’s 3-year-old brother had bug-infested clothes and decaying teeth. DHS sustains the neglect finding and selects a private agency, Pathways of Pa., to help the family. It provides assistance until March 1999.

Prison for three in Danieal Kelly’s death

Danieal Kelly’s father was not there when she starved to death almost five years ago in her mother’s squalid West Philadelphia apartment.

Neither was Dana Poindexter, the city Department of Human Services social worker who supposedly investigated reports that she was being neglected. Nor Mickal Kamuvaka, head of a DHS contractor paid to put a social worker in Danieal’s house twice a week to make sure she was safe.

But a Common Pleas Court jury Friday ruled that each played a role that inevitably led to an agonizing death for a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who could not care for herself.

The jury deliberated seven hours before finding the three guilty on all charges:

Daniel Kelly Sr., 40, endangering the welfare of a child.

Poindexter, 54, child endangerment, recklessly endangering another person, and perjury.

Kamuvaka, 62, involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment, reckless endangerment, perjury, criminal conspiracy, and four charges involving what prosecutors called a “forgery fest” to create a case file to fool investigators into thinking Kelly actually got in-home services.

None showed any emotion as the verdicts were announced shortly before 4 p.m.

“It’s been five years and I am tremendously, tremendously gratified by the jury’s verdict,” said Acting First Assistant District Attorney Edward McCann, who with Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Selber got the case Aug. 4, 2006, upon Kelly’s death.

McCann praised the jury for seeing that all three played parts in the death in a fetid, two-bedoom apartment Kelly shared with her mother, Andrea, and eight siblings.

Andrea Kelly, 42, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in 2009 and is serving a 20-to-40-year prison term.

Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart set sentencing for Sept. 6.

McCann said Daniel Kelly faces a seven-year prison term, Poindexter eight to 16 years, and Kamuvaka up to 25 years.

Defense attorneys – Earl G. Kauffman for Kelly, Joshua E. Scarpello for Kamuvaka, and Craig Hosay for Poindexter – said they would discuss possible appeals with their clients.

Scarpello said he had hoped the jury might acquit Kamuvaka of involuntary manslaughter.

“The only reason she went to trial is she didn’t want to admit she killed anybody, and that’s what that charge means,” Scarpello said.

Daniel Kelly and Kamuvaka have been in custody. Kelly’s bail was revoked this year after he fled to Indiana. Kamuvaka was in federal custody serving a 171/2-year term for health-care fraud involving Danieal Kelly’s case.

Minehart immediately revoked Poindexter’s bail, and deputies removed him from the courtroom.

When Danieal Kelly died, she weighed 42 pounds, the weight of an average 5-year-old. Authorities said she was lying on a feces-stained mattress, her back pocked with maggot-infested bedsores, one so deep it exposed her hipbone.

Her shocking death – and those of other children under DHS supervision – triggered a wholesale review of what DHS did to protect the city’s most vulnerable families.

The Inquirer published a series on the children’s deaths, and in 2006 Mayor John F. Street fired the top two DHS officials. Other employees followed, some retiring before they were fired.

In August 2008, a county investigating grand jury recommended charges against nine people – including the three who went to trial – and blasted a “toxic culture” at DHS where workers did not do their jobs and supervisors did not hold them accountable.

DHS Commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose released a statement Friday saying the verdicts “represent the closing of a sad chapter in the history of the department.”

Ambrose cited a 2011 report of a DHS oversight board of child-welfare experts that found post-Kelly agency changes have “led to increased child safety and to improved fairness in the decision-making process for families.”

Witnesses who testified during the nine-day trial outlined a series of events where adults responsible for Danieal Kelly’s welfare went missing or ignored reports of her tortured deterioration between 2003 and 2006.

Kelly Sr. was charged for abandoning his daughter and her year-older brother, Daniel Jr., with his ex-wife even though he took them from her 10 years earlier because of neglect.

Witnesses said Poindexter, a former DHS intake social worker, never visited the Kelly house to investigate neglect complaints involving Danieal and then kept his investigation file open for 21/2 years, preventing her from getting in-home services.

And the jury found Kamuvaka ignored reports that her MultiEthnic caseworker assigned to Danieal in April 2006 never went to the house.

Four months later, the girl was dead, and Kamuvaka convened an “all-hands” staff meeting on Aug. 4, 2006, to create a case file showing she had received services.

Defense attorneys argued that only Kelly’s mother was culpable for her death.

Daniel Kelly removed the children in 1995 after in-laws reported Andrea Kelly was neglecting them. He took them to Pittsburgh, where he was living with a girlfriend, and the couple and children then moved to Phoenix, where they had three other children.

Daniel Kelly and his two children returned to Philadelphia in July 2003 after he and his girlfriend separated.

They again started living with Andrea Kelly – who by then had seven other children – and other relatives. But in March 2004 Daniel Kelly was ejected from the house after arguing with his mother-in-law.

He never again saw Danieal. He testified that his ex-wife moved and would not say where she and the children were living, though he conceded he took no legal action for visitation.

Outcomes for Other Defendants in the Case

Following is the status of those charged by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office in the Danieal Kelly case who did not go to trial:

Andrea Kelly, 42, Danieal’s mother, pleaded guilty in April 2009 to third-degree murder. She was sentenced to 20 to 40 years and is housed at the state prison in Muncy.

Julius Juma Murray, 54, Danieal’s last caseworker, an employee of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc., pleaded guilty in February to involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy, and child endangerment, and was sentenced to four to eight years in prison. Murray is also serving an 11-year federal prison term for his conviction on health-care fraud and conspiracy. Murray, a native of Sierra Leone, is in federal custody and will face deportation after serving his sentence.

Laura Sommerer, 36, Danieal’s last city Department of Human Services caseworker, pleaded guilty in 2009 to child endangerment and was sentenced to four years’ probation.

Marie Moses, 37, a friend of Andrea Kelly, pleaded guilty in 2009 to perjury and was sentenced to three years’ probation.

Andrea Miles, now 21, Moses’ daughter and a friend of Andrea Kelly, pleaded guilty in Juvenile Court in 2008 to perjury and was sentenced to probation.

Diamond Brantley, 25, a friend of Andrea Kelly, pleaded guilty in 2009 to perjury and was sentenced to two years’ probation.

Other than Kamuvaka and Murray, those indicted in the federal probe who were associated with MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc. were:

Solomon Manamela, 53, MultiEthnic cofounder. He was convicted at trial and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Currently at federal prison at Fort Dix.

Earle McNeill, 74, MultiEthnic cofounder. He pleaded guilty to fraud charges and was sentenced to 71/2 years. Currently at federal prison in Butler, N.C.

Manuelita Buenaflor, 68, MultiEthnic cofounder and quality assurance supervisor. She pleaded guilty to fraud charges and was sentenced to three years in prison. Currently at federal prison in Danbury, Conn.

Mariam Coulibaly, 42, MultiEthnic caseworker convicted at trial of fraud. She was sentenced to 11 years. She is at the federal prison in Hazleton, W.Va.

Christiana Nimpson, 55, MultiEthnic social worker. She pleaded guilty to fraud charges and was sentenced to 20 months. Currently in transit between federal prisons.

Sotheary Chan, 42, MultiEthnic office worker, pleaded guilty to fraud charges and was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Currently in federal halfway house in Atlanta, Ga.

Patricia Burch, 58, former Philadelphia special education teacher who moonlighted for MultiEthnic. She pleaded guilty to lying to a federal grand jury and was sentenced to 24 months. Currently at federal prison in Alderson, W. Va.

- Joseph A. Slobodzian

Danieal Kelly’s Death Could Have Been Prevented

How do employees who would be fired in the private sector keep working for government agencies?

http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2011/07/15/danieal-kellys-death-prevented/#comments

Today the jury goes back to work in the Danieal Kelly case. Given the facts of the case, I would not want to be on that jury. Like many similar cases that make headlines way too late, this case caused people to wonder, “How could a child die when being monitored by DHS?” What we learn is that DHS—or an equivalent entity in other cities and states—isnot monitoring. This causes a great hue and cry, reforms are made, and then it happens again with another child who comes to our attention only after abuse, neglect or death.

I recognize that the system is underfunded, understaffed, that social workers have brutal jobs and are severely underpaid. But in my experience working in the mental health system, I have seen social workers go above and beyond for the people they serve in the most heroic way possible. The social workers on the front lines who make a difference in people’s lives are, in my opinion, as worthy of praise as firefighters and police officers. And they prove that it’s far from impossible to do the job well.

Because their jobs are so stressful, it’s key to have good managers who facilitate good performance but also hold them accountable when they don’t excel, or worse, when they are neglectful. In my experience, I was shocked to see how many employees were retained even when everyone at an agency knew they were doing a terrible job. In the private sector these employees would have been terminated, albeit after the requisite HR mandates. So why, in the nonprofit and public sector, are poor employees kept on?

Let me give you an example. At one agency, there was an employee who slept on the job every day. He worked at a place where people with mental illnesses came for help, comfort and company. They generally weren’t in crisis, but they were entitled to be treated with respect. To have the staffer on duty sleeping all the time—what message does this convey to the visitors, who are already treated poorly by society? This staffer failed to do other work that was unrelated to interacting with people, i.e., paperwork and the like. He slept and slept and slept.

He was thought of as a joke. His manager wanted him fired. But the administration was reluctant to make a move. In this case, it was a question of being understaffed. Would a replacement be any better? The pay was so incredibly low, and applicants were often unqualified. If he was fired without a suitable replacement, the agency would be violating laws by not having sufficient staff at the location. But initiating a hiring process would be tough too, given that the job would be posted publicly and Sleepytime would find out. There was also a feeling that this guy—who was working additional jobs to make ends meet—was entitled to his sleep. As is so often the case, the needs of the clients, as they are sometimes called, was absolutely secondary.

Another example: A woman employee at a different facility was having increasing trouble coming to work regularly. Her behavior was erratic when she was there. In fact, several times she compromised the safety of her clients with her bizarre behaviors. Everyone felt keenly for her because she wasn’t well. She needed help. In the meantime, though, she simply wasn’t fit to be responsible for people. But I heard she wasn’t being fired because the administration feared a lawsuit for wrongful termination or discrimination. This fear was deeply entrenched. Employees often said, “I can’t get fired. They’re terrified of lawsuits.” This enabled some pretty bad behavior.

There was another employee who called out of work every Monday after payday. Each time he called out, he’d say a different family member had died and he had to go to the funeral out of state. Pretty soon his whole family was dead, including distant cousins. He missed as much work as he could get away with without violating rules. He was in direct service, meaning that clients depended on him particularly. His cavalier attitude about attendance was disrespectful and caused his co-workers to have to pick up his slack, thereby causing problems for their clients. Yet everyone laughed about his “antics.” And his supervisors said they couldn’t fire him because no one had proof that he was lying. Other aspects of his performance were subpar as well.  Then he was accused of sexual harassment—which he’d been fired for at his last job. The accuser in this case was credible. But, to be fair (and I agree with this), the agency launched an investigation—an investigation that took a very long time. Ultimately, the results of the investigation were termed inconclusive. He kept his job.

And in a similar instance, an employee who was accused of sexual harassment—and was found culpable—was not terminated but simply demoted and moved to a different department. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the transfers I saw were not unlike the Catholic Church shifting guilty priests around.

In the case of Danieal Kelly, social worker Dana Poindexter’s employment history was appalling. In the private sector—and I’m talking even at a Barnes & Noble or something—he would have been fired 20 times over. But instead of working at a bookstore, he was responsible for safeguarding the lives of vulnerable children. The Inquirer has done excellent reporting on this case and revealed a very problematic work history. From the paper:

As a DHS intake social worker, Poindexter was assigned to investigate hotline allegations of child abuse or neglect. Poindexter had 60 days to file a report recommending services or close the case.

In a June 25, 2003, evaluation, [supervisor Donna] Grubb wrote that Poindexter still had eight cases assigned to him in 2001—all awaiting determinations.

“This failure to move your cases deprives children and families of the services that they desperately need,” Grubb wrote.

Emphasis mine because this kind of evaluation—that acknowledges he is not working hard enough to protect children—was probably filed away in an HR drawer somewhere and essentially forgotten. I have seen that countless times. Rather than sound an alarm and say, “He is jeopardizing lives!” things just move along. Also from the Inky:

DHS social worker Catherine Mondi testified that she was sent to investigate the Kelly household on June 20, 2004, after an anonymous call to the DHS hotline….. Mondi, who said she believed Andrea Kelly and her children needed services immediately, told the jury she followed DHS protocol and reported to Poindexter.

More than a year later, on September 15, 2005, social worker Trina Jenkins testified that she was sent to the Kelly household, at a new address, responding to another anonymous hotline call. Jenkins said she also found Andrea Kelly overwhelmed and, two years after Danieal’s case was first opened, none of the children was in school and Danieal had not received medical or therapeutic care…. Like Mondi a year earlier, Jenkins said she went to Poindexter and his supervisor, Janice Walker, but got a hostile reception.

The blog Dreamin Demon (which I confess to being unfamiliar with) puts things more bluntly:

Poindexter received a report in October 2002 about Andrea Kelly’s children living in a house with no gas, no water, no working toilets, and a collapsed roof. All he had to do was determine, by December 8, 2002, that the Kelly family needed services or that the children were not at risk. However, he did nothing. And this was crucial for Danieal, because whenever a case is not properly closed by the intake unit, any subsequent reports will go to the worker with the unclosed case: in this case, Dana Poindexter. Danieal’s family was hotlined four more times between October 2002 and April 2005. All four reports landed on the desk of Dana Poindexter. And every single time, he did nothing. NOTHING. According to the grand jury’s report, he “failed to complete a single investigative report, progress note, risk assessment, or any other document required by DHS.” …

In April 2007, a detective with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office searched Poindexter’s work area. In his cubicle, she found a cardboard box large enough to hold a file cabinet. It was filled to the top with case files, food wrappers and unopened mail (some four years old). At the bottom of the box was the Kelly family file. …

And yes, of course, the story becomes even worse when you consider that Poindexter’s immediate supervisor Janice Walker referred to his paperwork as “horrendous” yet gave him satisfactory and even superior ratings on his evaluations. Not enough for you? Janice Walker’s immediate supervisor Martha Poller falsified DHS records to conceal Poindexter’s nonperformance. Poller subsequently was promoted … to oversee child fatality reviews.

So now that you’ve read all this, are you surprised Danieal Kelly died? I’m not. I wish I were.

Prosecution grills Danieal’s father at trial

http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-12/news/29764989_1_danieal-kelly-mickal-kamuvaka-kelly-household

“Her personality was so sweet, so endearing,” Levin testified. “She was appreciative for whatever was being done with her or for her.”

The Danieal Kelly seen by Philadelphia School District psychologist Wendy Galson on June 12, 2006, at a school admissions evaluation at her mother’s West Philadelphia house, was anything but.

“She appeared thin, small, and she was sitting in a larger umbrella stroller,” said Galson. The Danieal she met did not speak, screamed loudly when Galson tried to move her stroller, and was unable to tolerate even an hour’s evaluation.

Less than two months later, she was dead, her weight down from 100 to 42 pounds, her body dehydrated and pocked with deep bedsores.

Galson looked shocked when Acting First Assistant District Attorney Edward McCann projected a photo of a grinning, exuberant Danieal in Arizona at a school party.

“Look at her chubby cheeks,” said Galson, who also commented on the flexibility of Danieal’s arms, which were raised in a cheer.

When she met Kelly, Galson said, her arms and hands were curled and locked close to her body, the result of a lack of physical therapy.

Danieal’s father, Daniel Sr., 40, is charged with child endangerment for leaving her with his ex-wife, Andrea, whom he knew had neglected her before.

Daniel Kelly had taken their two children, Daniel Jr. and Danieal, from Andrea Kelly’s custody in 1996. He and the children moved to Arizona with his girlfriend; the three returned to Philadelphia in 2003 when the relationship ended and he then again left the children with his ex-wife.

Andrea Kelly, 42, has pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and is serving 20 to 40 years in prison.

Two others are charged with failing to provide at-home social services deemed crucial to Danieal Kelly’s health and safety and then lying about it.

Dana Poindexter, 54, a former intake social worker at the Department of Human Services, was supposed to investigate child-abuse complaints, verify them, and, if they were found to be true, start the process of getting services.

Also charged is Mickal Kamuvaka, 62, cofounder and chief administrator of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc., a now-defunct DHS contractor that was paid to have a worker monitor the health and safety of Danieal Kelly, her brother, and Andrea Kelly’s eight other children.

Daniel Kelly’s lawyer has said Kelly will testify in his own defense. Lawyers for Poindexter and Kamuvaka have said that only Andrea Kelly is responsible for Danieal’s death.

Also testifying Wednesday was DHS social worker John Dougherty, who on Aug. 4, 2006, was sent to investigate after the girl was found dead.

Dougherty called the house in the 1700 block of Memorial Avenue “one of the worst I’d ever seen.”

“The house was deplorable, full of clothing and debris. The smell was atrocious. It hit you when you first walked in,” said Dougherty.

Dougherty’s testimony supported the prosecution’s claim that the two social workers on trial never provided services – including twice-weekly visits to the home – approved for the Kelly family.

Dougherty testified that the DHS caseworker responsible for the Kelly household, Laura Sommerer, joined him on that 2006 emergency call.

Dougherty said Sommerer was supposed to have inspected the Kelly house at least once a month. The household was also supposed to receive twice-weekly visits from Julius Juma Murray, a MultiEthnic employee.

Sommerer, now 36, pleaded guilty to child endangerment in 2009 and was sentenced to four years probation.

Murray, 53, pleaded guilty in February to involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy, and child endangerment, and was sentenced to four to eight years in prison.

On Tuesday, Daniel Kelly Jr., now 20, testified that he recalled just three social worker visits to the home in the three years he and his sister lived with their mother in West Philadelphia.

Danieal Kelly trial: Damning memos read

When Poindexter received a 10-day suspension, a memo from then DHS Commissioner Alba Martinez concluded, “I hope this is the last time we have to remind you of these issues.” It wasn’t.

When DHS case worker Catherine Mondi fielded a hotline call about Danieal in 2004 — that she could be heard screaming at times and didn’t receive necessary services — she deferred to Poindexter, who was already assigned. She would die two years later.

Daniel Kelly is expected to testify.

Danieal Kelly trial bores in on record of social worker

When Philadelphia social worker Dana Poindexter was suspended in August 2008, after a grand jury recommended criminal charges for his role in the 2006 starvation death of Danieal Kelly, his bosses could not have been shocked.

After all, Poindexter’s supervisors in the Department of Human Services had already suspended him three times – twice in 2003 and once in 2005 – including one incident where an infant in his caseload died at home.

But Poindexter remained a DHS employee and even got a “superior” rating on a job evaluation two months before a 30-day suspension in 2005.

Poindexter’s troubled work history – and DHS’s inability to get rid of an employee one former supervisor said “didn’t seem to want to be a social worker” – was dissected Friday in the Common Pleas Court trial of him and two others in the death of the disabled 14-year-old girl.

Danieal’s father, Daniel Kelly Sr., 40, is charged with child endangerment. He allegedly abandoned Danieal Kelly and her year-older brother, Daniel Jr., with their mother, Andrea, in 2003 after returning with them to Philadelphia following several years living with a girlfriend in Arizona.

Also charged is Mickal Kamuvaka, 62, cofounder and onetime chief administrator of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc., a now-defunct DHS contractor paid to do twice-weekly visits to monitor Danieal Kelly’s welfare after the case was taken from Poindexter in September 2005.

Poindexter is charged with child endangerment, as well as perjury over what he told the grand jury.

Lawyers for the three contend that only Andrea Kelly is responsible for her daughter’s death. Andrea Kelly, 42, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and is serving 20 to 40 years in prison.

Poindexter’s attorney Craig Hosay struggled Friday to rehabilitate his client’s image before the jury. He spent more than an hour questioning Martha Poller, a retired DHS administrator, about Poindexter’s job evaluations.

Hosay focused particularly on Poindexter’s Aug. 1, 2006, review, in which supervisor Janice Walker rated him “superior” in every category.

Hosay got Poller to confirm what he has described as personal animosity between Poindexter and his previous supervisor, Donna Grubb. Hosay also noted that Poindexter’s performance improved under Walker, who had supervised him years before as well.

Grubb, who has retired from DHS, testified Thursday that Poindexter was suspended for 10 days in 2003 after the death of a three-week-old infant.

Social worker’s performance at issue in Danieal Kelly trial

July 08, 2011|By Joseph A. Slobodzian, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

When Philadelphia social worker Dana Poindexter was suspended in August 2008, after a grand jury recommended criminal charges for his role in the 2006 starvation death of Danieal Kelly, his bosses could not have been shocked.

After all, Poindexter’s supervisors in the Department of Human Services had already suspended him three times – twice in 2003 and once in 2005 – including one incident where an infant in his caseload died at home.

But Poindexter remained a DHS employee and even got a “superior” rating on a job evaluation two months before a 30-day suspension in 2005.

Poindexter’s troubled work history – and DHS’s inability to get rid of an employee one former supervisor said “didn’t seem to want to be a social worker” – was dissected Friday in the Common Pleas Court trial of him and two others in the death of the disabled 14-year-old girl.

Danieal’s father, Daniel Kelly Sr., 40, is charged with child endangerment. He allegedly abandoned Danieal Kelly and her year-older brother, Daniel Jr., with their mother, Andrea, in 2003 after returning with them to Philadelphia following several years living with a girlfriend in Arizona.

Also charged is Mickal Kamuvaka, 62, cofounder and onetime chief administrator of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc., a now-defunct DHS contractor paid to do twice-weekly visits to monitor Danieal Kelly’s welfare after the case was taken from Poindexter in September 2005.

Poindexter is charged with child endangerment, as well as perjury over what he told the grand jury.

Lawyers for the three contend that only Andrea Kelly is responsible for her daughter’s death. Andrea Kelly, 42, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and is serving 20 to 40 years in prison.

Poindexter’s attorney Craig Hosay struggled Friday to rehabilitate his client’s image before the jury. He spent more than an hour questioning Martha Poller, a retired DHS administrator, about Poindexter’s job evaluations.

Hosay focused particularly on Poindexter’s Aug. 1, 2006, review, in which supervisor Janice Walker rated him “superior” in every category.

Hosay got Poller to confirm what he has described as personal animosity between Poindexter and his previous supervisor, Donna Grubb. Hosay also noted that Poindexter’s performance improved under Walker, who had supervised him years before as well.

Grubb, who has retired from DHS, testified Thursday that Poindexter was suspended for 10 days in 2003 after the death of a three-week-old infant.

Grubb testified that Poindexter had been assigned in September 2002 to investigate reports of neglect involving three siblings. Poindexter visited one of the siblings, a boy, at his school and reported that “the child appeared to be safe.”

But Poindexter’s file noted that he went to the home to check on the boy’s sisters, found no one there, left his business card, and never returned. On Dec. 20, 2002, DHS was notified that a 3-week-old baby born to the boy’s 14-year-old sister had died.

Under questioning by Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Selber, Poller confirmed Poindexter’s other suspensions, including one of 30 days in October 2005.

Poller said Poindexter was suspended – and Walker orally reprimanded – after Poindexter was sent to take a 14-year-old girl from her school to a grandmother’s house after the girl reported she was abused at home.

Poindexter picked up the girl, Poller testified, but the grandmother was not home, so he dropped her off at 52d and Jefferson Streets with bus tokens and a few dollars to get to her grandmother’s later.

The grand jury that recommended charges in Kelly’s death criticized DHS’s management then as a “toxic culture” where caseworkers failed to do their jobs and supervisors failed to hold them accountable.

Friday, Poller said she was not sure if Poindexter should have been suspended. She said she agreed to the discipline only after meeting with her boss and a city personnel officer.

As an intake social worker, Poindexter was supposed to investigate and refer a case for at-home services within 60 days, or close the case. When the Kelly file was taken from him in September 2005, it was still uninvestigated after three years.

Though the Kelly case was given to a new social worker to arrange at-home services through MultiEthnic, prosecutors allege that the DHS subcontractor did almost as little as Poindexter.

Kelly, who had cerebral palsy and could not care for herself, starved to death Aug. 4, 2006, in the filthy two-bedroom West Philadelphia apartment she shared with her mother and eight siblings. She weighed just 42 pounds and was resting in her own waste on a bare mattress, her back covered with deep bedsores.

Philadelphia jury hears Danieal Kelly’s brother

July 06, 2011|By Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer

http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-06/news/29743251_1_danieal-kelly-mickal-kamuvaka-andrea-kelly

Though he lived with his mother and nine siblings, 15-year-old Daniel Kelly Jr. knew he was the only one responsible for himself and his severely disabled 14-year-old sister, Danieal.

His father had abandoned them in 2003 to the care of their mother, who had moved them all to a squalid two-bedroom apartment in West Philadelphia without heat, electricity, or water.

“After a while, I would take care of me and my sister because nobody else would,” Kelly told a Philadelphia jury Tuesday.

Kelly, now 20, testified in the criminal trial of his father and namesake and two social workers charged for their alleged roles in the events leading to the Aug. 4, 2006, starvation death of Danieal Kelly.

Kelly testified that in 2006, Danieal, who had cerebral palsy and could not move around or care for herself, was losing weight and becoming increasingly incommunicative.

The night before Danieal died, Kelly said, he tried to give her water and begged his mother to call an ambulance.

Kelly said Andrea Kelly refused: “She’s just sick, she’ll get over it tomorrow.”

Kelly said he woke the next morning and “heard her [his mother] crying. I already knew what happened.”

Kelly described a childhood of constant deprivation at the hands of a father who seemed not to care about his children and a mother unable to care for them or her eight other children.

Daniel Kelly Sr., 40, is charged with child endangerment for leaving his children with his ex-wife, whom he knew had neglected them before.

Two others are charged with failing to provide at-home social services deemed vital for the safety and health of Danieal and her siblings and then lying about it.

Dana Poindexter, 54, a former intake social worker for the city Department of Human Services, was supposed to investigate child-abuse complaints, verify them, and, if true, start the process of getting services.

Mickal Kamuvaka, 62, was cofounder and chief administrator of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc., a now-defunct DHS contractor assigned to monitor the health and safety of Danieal and the children who lived with Andrea Kelly.

Andrea Kelly, 42, has pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and is serving 20 to 40 years in prison.

Daniel Kelly Jr. was the first witness Tuesday as the prosecution resumed its case before a Common Pleas Court jury.

He testified in a soft monotone, staring at the tabletop as if in shock. He looked at his father only when asked to identify him by acting First Assistant District Attorney Edward McCann.

The elder Kelly watched his son without apparent emotion. Only when Daniel Kelly Jr. testified that his father had disciplined him by “whippings” with an electric cord, and that he once had kicked Danieal because she ground her teeth at night, did the elder Kelly furrow his brow and shake his head from side to side.

According to court documents, the elder Kelly took his children from his ex-wife in 1996 after finding them neglected. He took them to Pittsburgh and began a relationship with a woman named Kathleen John.

The following year Kelly, John, and his two children moved to Phoenix, Ariz.

Daniel Kelly Jr. told the jury his “stepmother” was his only good childhood memory. Both he and Danieal went to school and she began flourishing: learning to speak and, with therapy, gaining some use of her hands and arms.

Daniel Kelly Jr. wept when McCann showed him photographs of Danieal, laughing, at her birthday party, taken in Arizona.

But Daniel Kelly Sr. and John separated, and he and the children moved to an apartment. They no longer went to school, his son said, and Danieal got no more therapy.

At night, he said, his father went to work, leaving them alone.

After they returned to Philadelphia in 2003, Kelly said, his father again left them in the care of their mother and moved out.

He saw his father once more before his sister died and once afterward, the younger Kelly testified.

As for the twice-weekly visits from social workers the “at-risk” family was supposed to get through DHS, Kelly recalled two or three visits.

Prosecutors say Danieal, who weighed about 100 pounds when she lived in Arizona, weighed just 42 pounds when she was found dead in her mother’s West Philadelphia apartment. Her body was riddled with maggot-infested bedsores, one of which went to the bone.

Danieal Kelly’s body appeared to be decomposing, opening witness says in neglect trial

July 02, 2011|By Joseph A. Slobodzian, Inquirer Staff Writer

Helen Garczynski said the call to the Philadelphia Examiner’s Office was unusual: the decomposing body of a 14-year-old.

Even with a long list of bodies to be retrieved for autopsies from around the city, said Garczynski, the Aug. 4, 2006, call about a child was enough for her to immediately be dispatched to the scene.

She said the 1700 block of Memorial Avenue in West Philadelphia was eerie: “The whole street seemed like it was condemned. It didn’t look like nobody lived there.”

But police were in front of 1722, Garczynski said, and with them a little boy who asked, “Can my Nana say goodbye to my sister?”

Inside the filthy, stinking house, Garczynski said, was the recently dead Danieal Kelly, whose body was so emaciated and bedsore-ridden it must have appeared decomposed to police.

Garczynski was the first prosecution witness Friday in the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court trial of the disabled child’s father, Daniel Kelly, 40, and two social services workers for their alleged roles in Danieal’s starving by her troubled mother.

Andrea Kelly, 41, pleaded guilty in 2009 to third-degree murder and is serving 20 to 40 years in prison.

Garczynski, a veteran of 11 years with the Medical Examiner’s Office, told the jury it was clear Danieal, who had cerebral palsy and could not move around or care for herself, had lived in unspeakable conditions for some time.

Feces were piled on the floor in front of the bed as if someone had brushed them off, she testified.

Garczynski said the odor from the girl’s body was “real bad, but it wasn’t the normal decomposing body smell I’m used to. It was more like some infectious smell.”

Garczynski said Danieal was wrapped in sheets on a bed in a rear first-floor room. The house had no electricity, running water, or ventilation.

The body was abuzz with flies, and maggots were crawling from a bedsore. She said Danieal’s body was literally “embedded into the mattress.”

“I actually had to physically pull her from the bed,” Garczynski testified.

After Garczynski’s testimony, the trial recessed for the Independence Day holiday. Testimony resumes Tuesday.

In her opening to the jury, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Selber acknowledged that Andrea Kelly killed Danieal.

But Kelly’s ex-husband, social worker Dana Poindexter, and social services agency head Mickal Kamuvaka each committed acts that “predictably and inevitably led to her death,” Selber said.

Each had a “legal duty of care” to Danieal that they ignored, Selber said.

In their openings, the defense lawyers – Earl G. Kauffman for Kelly, Craig Hosay for Poindexter, and Joshua Scarpello for Kamuvaka – said Danieal’s mother alone caused her death.

Andrea Kelly secreted her eight children and undermined efforts to locate and get care for Danieal and her siblings, they said. They said prosecutors were trying to spread blame for a notorious tragedy that should not have happened.

Kauffman said Kelly, charged with child endangerment, will testify and tell how he cared for Danieal.

Poindexter, 54, was an intake social worker for the city Department of Human Services who Selber said ignored five reports about Danieal’s mistreatment. Poindexter is charged with child endangerment, recklessly endangering another person, and perjury.

Kamuvaka, 62, was cofounder and chief administrator of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc., a now-defunct private firm DHS hired to monitor the health and safety of Danieal and her siblings.

Kamuvaka is charged with involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment, conspiracy, and counts involving an alleged cover-up of the circumstances surrounding Danieal’s death.

Starvation death trial opens on gruesome note

July 01, 2011|By Joseph A. Slobodzian, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

http://articles.philly.com/2011-07-01/news/29726647_1_danieal-kelly-mickal-kamuvaka-starvation-death
A technician for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office described to a Common Pleas Court jury today the gruesome scene in the West Philadelphia house where 14-year-old Danieal Kelly’s body was found.“It smelled real bad, but it wasn’t the normal decomposing body smell I’m used to,” testified Helen Garczynski, recalling the early afternoon of Aug. 4, 2006, when police let her inside the house in the 1700 block of Memorial Avenue in West Philadelphia.“It was more like some like some infectious smell,” Garczynski.

Police then led Garczynski to the rear first-floor room where the rigid, nearly skeletal body of Danieal was in a bed, wrapped in sheets.

The body was abuzz with flies, and maggots were crawling from a bedsore. Garczynski said the girl’s body was literally “embedded into the mattress.”

“I actually had to physically pull her from the bed,” Garczynski testified.

Garczynski was the first witness to testify in the start of the trial of the girl’s father, Daniel Kelly, 40, and two social services workers for their roles that allegedly led to the disabled child’s starvation death at the hands of her mother.

Andrea Kelly, 41, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and is now serving a 20-to-40-year prison term for third-degree murder.

In her opening statement to the jury, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Selber acknowledged that only Andrea Kelly killed her daughter, who was born premature with cerebral palsy and could not move around on her own.

But Kelly’s ex-husband, social worker Dana Poindexter, and social services agency head Mickal Kamuvaka committed acts that “predictably and inevitably led to her death,” Selber said.

In their openings, the three defense attorneys said the blame for Danieal’s death rests solely on the mother, who hid her family and undermined efforts to locate and care for Danieal and her siblings. Defense attorneys said prosecutors were trying to spread blame for a tragedy that should not have happened.

Daniel Kelly’s lawyer, Earl G. Kauffman, told the jury that Kelly – charged with child endangerment – would testify in his own defense and describe how he tried to see that Danieal received proper care.

After the first witness, the trial recessed for the Independence Day holiday weekend. Testimony resumes Tuesday before Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart.

Poindexter, 54, was an intake social worker for the city Department of Human Services who, the grand jury alleged, tossed Danieal’s case file into a trash-filled file box. Poindexter is charged with child endangerment, recklessly endangering another person, and perjury.

Kamuvaka, 62, was cofounder and chief administrator of MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc., a now-defunct private firm hired by DHS to monitor the health and safety of Danieal and eight siblings who lived with Andrea Kelly.

Kamuvaka is charged with involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment, conspiracy and a half-dozen other counts involving record-tampering and perjury – part of an alleged cover-up of the circumstances surrounding Danieal’s gruesome death

Judge: Patronage led to Danieal Kelly death

Friday, June 11, 2010

By MARYCLAIRE DALE

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=7489300

object>

PHILADELPHIA – June 10, 2010 – Political patronage contributed to the starvation death of a disabled Philadelphia girl under the city’s watch, a federal judge said Thursday in sentencing a social-services contractor to 17 1/2 years in prison.

The city paid Michal Kamuvaka’s politically connected firm $1 million a year to ensure that its neediest families got specialized attention.

Company workers assigned to the chaotic home where 14-year-old Danieal Kelly was wasting away in a wheelchair were supposed to ensure she and her siblings had proper housing, schooling and medical care.

But after 10 months of supposed twice-weekly visits, Danieal, who had cerebral palsy, was still not enrolled in school and had not been seen by a doctor. By the time she died in the sweltering home in August 2006, she weighed 42 pounds and had maggot-infested bedsores.

City audits of Kamuvaka’s company, MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Services, were “laughable,” since the firm got a heads up weeks in advance to get its paperwork in order, U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell said Thursday.

Dalzell doubted that even a whistle-blower, had one stepped up, could have interested the city in the contractor’s failings.

“It was patronage – plain and simple,” Dalzell said. “It was a deal, and nobody was taking this seriously” within the city’s Department of Human Services.

Case worker Julius Murray made just 10 visits, not the 46 noted in records dummied up on orders from Kamuvaka after Danieal died, Dalzell found.

“Here was a woman with a doctorate in social work who ran the operations of an agency so lackadaisically that, in the words of one of her colleagues, ‘It was just a matter of time’ that one of her charges died,” Dalzell said in giving Kamuvaka the maximum term and revoking her bail.

Later Thursday, Dalzell sentenced another company co-founder, Solomon Manamela, to 14 years for his role in the fraud. Manamela, a 52-year-old political refugee from South Africa, faces deportation when he gets out.

“Part of me died (after Danieal did),” Manamela, who oversaw training, told the judge.

Kamuvaka, 61, came to the U.S. from Liberia on a college scholarship, and went on to earn a Ph.D. and become a beloved mentor to social-work students at Lincoln University, several of whom spoke on her behalf Thursday.

She and co-defendant Earle McNeill, 72, formed the company in about 2000 to bid on the city contract. They had no other clients, and their primary experience was with adults and addicts.

“McNeill was, by whatever magic, indeed able to win the … (contract) in the summer of 2000, notwithstanding the reality that (the company) had no experience whatever in dealing with ‘at risk’ children,” Dalzell wrote in a recent opinion.

Even after Danieal died, the judge said Thursday, Kamuvaka visited an ally at City Hall, a DHS program director, in an effort to keep and even extend the $3.7 million, multiyear contract.

Then-acting Health Commissioner Carmen Paris soon ordered a coroner not to release the grim autopsy results, the coroner testified at Kamuvaka’s trial this year. But it was too late. Investigators – and the public – were becoming aware of the case. Paris resigned in 2008, days after a 258-page county grand jury report on Danieal’s death accused her of interfering with the investigation.

“It took a lot of people to kill this little girl,” said Dalzell, who faulted MultiEthnic, City Hall and the school district, which also made a home visit.

But the blame starts, he said, with the girl’s parents. Her mother, Andrea Kelly, is serving a 20- to 40-year state sentence after pleading guilty to third-degree murder. The girl’s father, Daniel Kelly, was accused of abandoning his daughter and faces child-endangerment charges.

Kamuvaka and Murray also still face a November trial in state court on involuntary manslaughter charges.

In all, nine MultiEthnic employees were convicted in the federal case – Kamuvaka, Manamela and two others at trial and five others through pleas. McNeill was previously sentenced to 7-1/2 years. The two others who went to trial will be sentenced Friday.

“I don’t think anybody should think of Dr. Kamuvaka as an evil person,” defense lawyer William Cannon argued. “This situation certainly got away from her, there’s no denying that. But that she would be indifferent to the situation that enveloped Danieal would just not be accurate.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bea Witzleben said the case is not one where children fell through the cracks. The Kellys, and other families ill-served by MultiEthnic, were identified by the city and assigned help.

“She (Kamuvaka) asked for this responsibility. She was given it and paid for it,” Witzleben said. “There was hope for that child to have a decent life.”

Absent case worker for starved girl gets 11 years

Published: Friday, June 11, 2010

By MARYCLAIRE DALE,Associated Press Writer

http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2010/06/11/news/doc4c1259e1c724d652744560.txt

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The morals of social workers who routinely skipped home visits to Philadelphia’s most troubled families, leading to a disabled girl’s starvation death, reminded a federal judge Friday of the “banality of evil” seen in Europe during the Holocaust.

U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell sentenced the family’s case worker, Julius Juma Murray, 52, of Upper Darby, and another employee of a social-services contractor to 11 years each for fraud and obstruction.

Witnesses this week called the pair and their seven convicted co-defendants — who include a former missionary nun and doctoral-level social worker — good people for whom the charges are anomalies.

The comments reminded Dalzell of Nazi Party members who were kind to neighbors and dogs.

“‘The banality of evil.’ Isn’t that what’s going on here?” Dalzell asked, citing a phrase coined by political theorist Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a German Jew, argued that the great evils in human history are committed not by psychopaths, but by ordinary people who accept the status quo.

Dalzell presided over a harrowing five-week trial this year that laboriously detailed the slow, painful demise of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly. She had cerebral palsy but had once thrived in the care of her father and his attentive girlfriend in Phoenix. A photograph from that era taken on a class trip shows a bright-eyed girl in pigtails grinning broadly for the camera.

But when his relationship failed, Daniel Kelly left Danieal with her unfit mother in Philadelphia, who was raising eight children in a squalid two-bedroom home.

By the time Danieal died in August 2006, starved and dehydrated, she weighed 42 pounds and had maggots crawling in her deep bedsores. She had not been to school or seen a doctor in the previous 10 months, despite being on the city’s radar.

The city was paying a startup firm called MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc. $1 million a year to focus on its neediest social-work cases.

But the politically connected firm — led by experienced, Ph.D.-level social worker Michal Kamuvaka — frequently skipped home visits, assigned student interns to the Kellys and other complex cases, and furiously forged documents to try to cover their tracks after Danieal died.

“‘Dr. K’ had a dozen people who just think she’s a saint. But we know just the contrary. We heard it over five weeks,” Dalzell said Friday. A day earlier, he had sentenced the 61-year-old Kamuvaka to 17 1/2 years in prison, despite pleas from friends and proteges.

Case worker Julius Juma Murray, 52, of Upper Darby, was supposed to be the final safety net for the long list of people who failed Danieal. But Murray — hired despite his lack of social work training — skipped visits as Danieal wasted away.

Andrea Kelly is serving 10 to 20 years for third-degree murder, and Daniel Kelly is charged with endangerment for allegedly abandoning her.

In all, nine MultiEthnic workers were convicted in the case, including case worker Mariam Coulibaly, sentenced Friday to 135 months. Coulibaly, 41, a mother of three from Brookhaven, had no role in Danieal’s death but helped forge documents, lied to the FBI and hid $50,000 after the verdict to shield it from the court-ordered restitution.

Ex-DHS worker receives probation Laura Sommerer, Danieal Kelly’s last social worker, got 4 years for endangering the child, who died at 14.

In sentencing the last Philadelphia social worker assigned to Danieal Kelly – the 14-year-old with cerebral palsy who starved to death in 2006 in her mother’s squalid apartment – a Philadelphia judge said yesterday that the woman’s bosses should have been charged with her.

“That the people at the top walked away from their positions and even advanced without any significant consequences is a crime which almost equals or maybe surpasses the crime in this case,” Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner said.

Lerner made his remarks before sentencing Laura Sommerer, 34, to four years of probation for pleading guilty to child endangerment.

Even before the scathing grand-jury presentment in August resulted in criminal charges against Sommerer and eight others, including Danieal’s parents, the girl’s gruesome death had taken a toll among officials at the city Department of Human Services.

In October 2006, two months after Danieal’s death, DHS Commissioner Cheryl Ransom-Garner resigned, her deputy was fired, and a regional state welfare director was demoted. Carmen Paris, the city’s acting health commissioner when Danieal died, resigned days before the grand-jury report was made public.

After the criminal charges were filed, seven DHS administrators or supervisors were suspended without pay.

But only Sommerer and DHS caseworker Dana Poindexter, 52, her predecessor on the Kelly case, were criminally charged. Both were supposed to have ensured that contract caseworkers DHS hired visited Kelly’s house twice weekly to make sure she was well. It was later learned that she had not been visited for almost two months before her death.

In January, state welfare officials recognized improvements at DHS by restoring its full operating license, although they warned that “much more work needs to be done.”

Lerner said DHS’s management problems had persisted through several mayoral administrations and said, “I hope things change. It’s a terrible thing that it takes the example of a case like this, and the unrelenting glare of publicity, before those changes occur.”

Sommerer’s sentence was far less than the 3 1/2 to seven years in prison she could have received. The sentence was negotiated by Assistant District Attorney Edward McCann and defense attorney Nathan J. Andrisani. Both said it took into account her cooperation in the criminal probe and good works in the community.

Danieal Kelly suffered from cerebral palsy and, according to a grand jury report, her mother was said to be “embarrassed by her disabled daughter, didn’t want to touch her, take her out in public, change her diapers or make sure she had enough fluids.” According to a grand jury report, Andrea Kelly’s family and friends constantly confronted her about Danieal’s deteriorating condition, but while she would promise to get help for her, she failed to do so, and eventually banished the concerned relatives from her home. While Danieal’s condidtion worsened, Andrea Kelly was said to have entertained, attended classes and tended to her other children. Danieal was not enrolled in school or given medical attention. The report stated that Andrea Kelly “rebuffed one of her sons when he begged her several times to call 911 to get help for Danieal in her final days.”

Top Aide Quits in DHS Fallout Carmen Paris, acting health chief at the time of Danieal Kelly’s death, came under heavy criticism.

http://articles.philly.com/2008-08-02/news/25258808_1_grand-jury-report-danieal-kelly-starvation-death

Unable to help herself because of her cerebral palsy, she wasted away from malnutrition and maggot-infested bedsores that ate her flesh. She died alone on a putrid mattress in her mother’s home, the floor covered in feces. She was 14 but weighed just 19.05 kg.

The nightmare of forced starvation and infection that killed Danieal while she was under the protection of the city’s human services agency is documented in a 258-page grand jury report released this week that charges nine people – her parents, four social workers and three family friends – in her ghastly death.

The report describes a mother, Andrea Kelly, who was embarrassed by her disabled daughter and didn’t want to touch her, take her out in public, change her nappies or make sure she had enough fluids. It portrays Daniel Kelly, the father who once had custody of Danieal, as having no interest in raising her.

And it accuses the city Department of Human Services of being “uncaring and incompetent.”

“It was this indifference that helped kill Danieal Kelly,” an angry District Attorney Lynne Abraham said. “How is it possible for this to have happened?”

The report should “outrage the entire Philadelphia community” and bring about “earth-shattering, cataclysmic changes” at the Department of Human Services, Abraham said.

Andrea Kelly, 39, the only defendant charged with murder, was ordered held today without bail. The social workers – suspected of falsifying home visits and progress reports in the case – face charges ranging from child endangerment to involuntary manslaughter. The family friends are accused of lying to the grand jury about the girl’s condition before her death.

None of the lawyers for any of the defendants had any immediate comment.

Human Services commissioner Anne Marie Ambrose, in office only a month, said yesterday that she is intent on improving child safety and worker accountability in an agency that has repeatedly been accused of failing to protect children.

Late today, the city announced the resignation of Assistant Health Commissioner Carmen Paris. The grand jury had accused Paris of interfering in the investigation of the girl’s death while she was acting health commissioner, but found insufficient evidence to charge her with obstruction of justice.

“There were preventable deaths,” said panelist Cindy W. Christian, a pediatrician who heads the child-abuse unit at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

To overhaul the agency, the panel recommended a series of reforms ranging from a rethinking of its core mission to the development of new investigative tools. Among other steps, it said the agency must:

Visit all children under 5 within two hours of receiving a warning that they might be abused or neglected. Currently, the agency takes up to five days to conduct many such visits.

Require social workers to use a common set of guidelines to evaluate whether children are in danger. Before the scandal broke, DHS had no such common standard, leading it to render important decisions about families randomly and capriciously.

Monitor more closely the outside contractors who handle most of the face-to-face contacts with children, parents and guardians. The agency should issue public report cards grading their performance, the panel said.

The panel said the mayor must appoint a permanent oversight commission to keep watch on DHS.

“This is urgent and doable,” said panel co-chair Carol Wilson Spigner of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Acting DHS Commissioner Arthur C. Evans Jr., who took over after Street forced out the previous commissioner, said the agency had already implemented some of the changes and would phase in the rest.

“DHS is embracing all of the recommended reforms,” Evans said.

Street, through a spokesman, commended the work of the unpaid panel but said a detailed response would come later. “The report is a road map to lasting reform and we welcome it,” spokesman Joe Grace said.

Michael Nutter, the Democratic nominee for mayor, said last night that, if elected, he would use the report as “a blueprint for change.”

Nutter added: “DHS must be fixed on behalf of the children of Philadelphia.”

Al Taubenberger, the Republican candidate, said he found the report powerful and convincing.

“It’s unconscionable that children are dying on the watch of the city and this agency,” Taubenberger said.

The panel suggested that DHS’ problems lie in a lack of leadership, not a lack of money.

As the report noted, “DHS is better financed and resourced than most, if not all, [agencies in] other major cities.”

Nor is the problem a lack of outside scrutiny. The agency’s pervasive problems have been documented in more than 20 lawsuits and reviews over the last two decades.

“Throughout the reports, there were themes that persist and remain unresolved today,” the panel wrote.

Said Spigner: “What we found was, the system does not know how to turn itself around.”

One key issue, the panel found, was that the agency had become the angel of last resort for the city’s most desperate residents, forcing social workers to try to solve an array of problems brought on by poverty.

The report said the agency long ago lost sight of its core mission: protecting children.

Again and again, the panel noted how random the decision-making had become within DHS.

To end that, the agency has already developed a new “safety-assessment tool” to guide all social workers in their contacts with clients.

The tool instructs DHS staff to focus on such issues as drug abuse, alcohol abuse and domestic violence – rather than, say, the cleanliness of a home.

Without guidelines, the panel found, social workers responded differently to the same set of problems in a family.

In particular, this “wide, wide variation in response” was noticeable in the case of children who died, said panel member Carol E. Tracy, executive director of the Women’s Law Center in Philadelphia.

The panel said the agency had also been hamstrung by its allegiance to state recommendations about how to classify clients.

Following those state rules, the agency has been responding quickly to cases in which children were allegedly being abused or sexually assaulted. But it responded much more slowly to warnings about possible neglect.

“Children die from neglect. They didn’t just die from physical abuse and sexual assault,” said Spigner. “So it’s a false dichotomy.”

At the panel’s urging, DHS had already begun responding with the same speed to all complaints involving younger children, regardless of their nature.

To underscore the new philosophy, Evans said, he has told his people, with a bit of hyperbole: “If we get a call saying, ‘The hair isn’t combed right,’ we go out and see the kid.”

The panel also called on DHS to do a better job of analyzing its performance and become more open with the public.

The department had piles of data in expensive computer systems, but made almost no effort to analyze it, the panel found.

“It’s all there, but it never really comes together,” said Evans.

He has been more transparent about the agency’s inner workings since taking the post in October.

To turn around the agency, Evans will have to rely on the existing cadre of DHS managers, many of whom have been promoted over the years from social worker positions to management jobs without proper training, the panel said.

“Managing requires a different set of skills, and there has not been an investment to help people acquire them,” said Spigner. “There are people in key positions who don’t know how to manage.”

Rita Urwitz, head of the DHS supervisors’ union, said she did not quarrel with the need for more management training.

“There has been for many, many years a problem with the infrastructure and zero training for staff and no real plan to fix it,” Urwitz said.

Estelle B. Richman, who once was the senior child-welfare official in Philadelphia and now heads the state’s Department of Public Welfare, said the report was a powerful critique of DHS.

“Unfortunately, the report is also a reminder that we’ve gone though this before,” she said. “The challenge for me and everyone else is to never have to go through another report like this again.”

Inquirer Investigation: ‘Bury Your Mistakes’

By Ken Dilanian and John Sullivan

Inquirer Staff Writers

Posted: Tue, Jun. 12, 2007, 11:57 AM