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Nashville Scene
More Details on Chad Youth Death
November 12, 2007
Elizabeth Ulrich
Staff Writer
Nashville Scene
 After
last week's cover story detailed the deaths of two troubled youth
and the abuse of countless others at the Chad Youth Enhancement
Center, officials in Montgomery County granted the Scene access to
the sheriff's office investigative file on the 2005 death of Linda
Harris. She was the first teen to die at the Midstate residential
facility designed to treat children ages 7 to 17 who have severe
behavioral issues.
Police reports and accounts of the
incident that the Scene uncovered in state regulatory files were
scant at best. But the sheriff's investigative file offers a more
complete, if disturbing, glimpse into the life and death of Harris.
More after the jump.
Harris was a 14-year-old from
Amityville, N.Y., whose developmental age was close to that of a
6-year-old. She lived with her father, a single dad—her mother, a
reported drug addict and alcoholic, died when Harris was a girl.
According to reports compiled by several New York state
psychiatrists, in 2004 Harris struck up an Internet relationship
with a 20-something man who later came to her home and raped her.
While Child Protective Services and police became involved in the
case after a doctor found evidence of the assault, one psychiatrist
wrote that "there was no follow-up and the perpetrator was not
caught."
Harris began to act out and "gained
weight significantly" because of several medications prescribed to
treat depression. Later that year, her disruptive behavior landed
her in a New York treatment center. But in 2005, she ran away and
was placed back at home with her father. At this point, psychiatric
assessments describe Harris as a hopeless girl who felt that "no one
would miss her if she was gone." When asked what she wished for
most, Harris told one therapist that she just wanted a mother.
But Harris' father said he couldn't
control her. A psychiatrist recommended that Harris be sent to a
"highly structured residential treatment center," and a New York
judge thought Chad was the answer.
A mere four days after arriving at
Chad, Harris died. According to a brief police offense report—all
that the sheriff's office had made public until now—Harris had been
"flashing boys" from her bedroom when staff pulled her arms behind
her back and escorted her to a time-out room, where she "became limp
and fell on the floor." Chad staffers then sat down next to her and
held her arms behind her back as she lay on her stomach, according
to the report. Once they let her go, it took a few minutes for
staffers to notice that her breathing had slowed. They called 911
and started CPR.
But the investigator's files,
complete with statements from numerous staffers and children who
witnessed the restraint, are much more grim. To punish Harris for
acting out that night, staff said that Charles Garner, the counselor
who restrained her, moved the girl's mattress into a time-out room,
where she was going to be forced to spend the night alone, sleeping
on the floor.
When Harris refused, Garner grabbed
her and moved her toward the time-out room, where he said she
"dropped her body weight," causing the two to fall onto the mattress
on the floor—with Garner's 260-pound body pressing down on Harris.
But residents who saw the incident didn't call it a fall. One girl
told police that she saw Garner "body slaming [sic] her on the
mattress."
After hitting the mattress, Garner
said he turned Harris' head to the side to help her breathe and
continued to restrain the girl belly down on the mattress for a
minute. Other staffers can't confirm what happened during the
restraint, though—Garner was the only one in the room. By the time
several nurses and another Chad counselor did arrive, they found
Harris still on her belly. Her face was bloody and she had soiled
herself—details that weren't mentioned in the initial police report
or even in some staff accounts of the incident.
But many of Harris' peers reported
this to police. One resident said: "Someone came in [to my room] and
said that the 'fat girl had crapped herself' and when I looked, I
saw her feet sticking out of the time-out room. A couple of staff
were laughing because she had [soiled herself]." Another girl said
that "after a while we started seeing blood [on the floor] and the
staff put paper over our window so we couldn't see what was going
on."
Staff reports piece together the
last few moments of Harris' life. When one nurse arrived in the
time-out room and asked Harris if she "was hurting," Harris didn't
answer. So the nurse walked out of the room. She told investigators
that it was common for residents not to answer questions right after
being restrained. One resident reported hearing a nurse tell Harris
that if she didn't get up, "we are going to have Mr. Garner get back
on you."
Staff reports conflict at this
point. One nurse said that when she and other nurses checked on
Harris a second time and found her unresponsive, a nurse brought in
an ammonia stick to put under Harris' nose. The girl still didn't
respond, so the nurse said they started CPR. Another Chad counselor
made no mention of the ammonia, but said staffers couldn't find
Harris' pulse and then rolled her over and began compressions.
Either way, when paramedics arrived
on the scene, they discovered the girl's lifeless body on the floor
outside of her room. Residents in the girls' wing of the facility
were understandably rattled. Some reported feeling "really scared."
One girl said her roommates started "singing soft songs to calm us
down."
Still, as violent and traumatic as
residents reported the event to be, state medical examiner Dr. Bruce
Levy ruled the death "natural." In an autopsy, Levy found that a
morbidly obese and asthmatic Harris had an enlarged heart that he
says is to blame for her death. Once Levy released that report,
investigator Larry Hodge met with Montgomery County assistant
district attorney Dan Brollier, and shortly after, the case was
closed. In a sheriff's office memo, Hodge wrote that Brollier told
him it wasn't necessary to present the circumstances of Harris'
death to a grand jury.
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