Teenager Left Hanging by Belt in Shelter, Police
Report Says
June 23, 2000
By Carol Marbin Miller
cmarbin@herald.com
When Oakland Park Police officer Matthew Marks arrived at a
state-licensed juvenile shelter last week to investigate the
attempted suicide of a 15-year-old boy, he was astonished to find
the youth still dangling from his black leather belt.
Police ``immediately loosened the belt,'' around the boy's neck,
Marks wrote in a police report. The boy did not have a pulse, but he
was still warm.
Now, the boy remains in a coma at Broward General Hospital, and
doctors think he has suffered permanent brain damage, said Oakland
Park Police Sgt. Dan Cucchi. The Herald is not naming the boy
because of his age.
``Oh, my God,'' said Chief Assistant Public Defender Howard
Finkelstein, when told of the police report. ``I am shocked. I am
almost speechless that anybody -- a jailer, a lawyer or a
candlestick maker -- would allow a child to remain hanging by his
neck and not take him down.''
The Public Defender's Office phoned the state's child abuse hot
line Thursday, and asked officials with the Department of Children
and Families to investigate the actions of employees at the 28-bed
Lippman Family Center shelter after the attempted suicide,
Finkelstein said. Public defenders have not yet been appointed to
represent the boy, who is facing domestic violence charges.
``If a kid is hanging, and not dead, and you don't cut him down
immediately, there is no excuse,'' said Finkelstein, whose office
represents the vast majority of children awaiting trial in Broward
County. ``This will cost the county millions of dollars -- as well
it should.''
The June 12 incident already is under investigation by the
Oakland Park police, the Department of Juvenile Justice's inspector
general's office and Lutheran Services Florida, the not-for-profit
social service agency that runs the shelter, named after former
state Rep. Fred Lippman.
Eight youths were housed at the shelter Thursday, and state
juvenile justice officials said they have taken no action against
the center pending the outcome of their investigation.
Joy Margolis, a spokeswoman at Lutheran Services' Tampa
headquarters, declined to discuss what actions the company is taking
in response to the incident. All calls were referred to the Tampa
headquarters, with local staff members refusing to answer questions.
``We are conducting an investigation internally to determine
exactly what happened,'' Margolis said Thursday. ``That continues as
we speak.
``We did hear that he was in a coma,'' Margolis said. ``This is a
very tragic situation. We really are very concerned about it.''
Lutheran Services Florida is part of an international social
services network that offers youth and family services, guardianship
programs for elders, disaster relief and resettlement services for
indigent immigrants. The agency has been in business much of the
last century, and about 20 years in Florida. The state contracts
with the agency to provide shelter to runaways and delinquents.
Last week, doctors said the boy was improving. However, earlier
this week, police were told the boy had lapsed into a coma.
``It is expected that he will have permanent brain damage from
the hanging,'' said Cucchi. ``The extent is not known.
``The rescue efforts could have been done sooner,'' Cucchi said.
``Obviously, the health and well-being of the patient is paramount
to anything else. Health and welfare should be anybody's first
concern.''
The boy was arrested last month on domestic violence charges
following an altercation with his mother. When the boy's parents
refused to let him come back home, he was ordered by Broward Circuit
Judge Dorian Damoorgian to remain at the runaway shelter until his
case was resolved.
In the days before his suicide attempt, the boy had confided to
acquaintances at the shelter that he wanted to end his life, the
police report states. The boy's roommate told police he didn't take
the boy seriously. ``They thought he was trying to get attention,''
said Cucchi.
PLANNED HANGING
At about 9:40 p.m. that night, as the boy's roommate was
preparing to take a shower, the boy told him, ``I'm going to hang
myself now,'' the police report states. ``About 10 minutes later,
after he finished showering, [the roommate] checked on [the boy] and
found him hanging from a belt off of his bunk bed.''
The roommate told a shelter employee, Sandra Trotter, who, in
turn, called 911 at about 9:50 p.m. When police and paramedics
arrived minutes later, Trotter was holding four Polaroid photographs
of the boy ``in the hanging position,'' the report states.
Meanwhile, the boy was still hanging from his neck.
``I observed [the boy] slumped down in a sitting position along
the side of his bunk bed,'' Marks wrote in his report. ``The belt
was looped around his neck and affixed to the top of the bunk bed.''
Jack Levine, a children's advocate and president of the Center
for Florida's Children in Tallahassee, said the suicide attempt was
worrisome because it could easily have been prevented if the boy's
peers at the shelter had alerted staff to his threats.
'CODE OF SECRECY'
Their silence, Levine said, reminded him of school chums who
failed to warn authorities that Nathaniel Brazill, the 13-year-old
Lake Worth middle schooler accused of shooting his teacher May 26,
was showing off his semiautomatic pistol to classmates.
``The code of secrecy young people have with their peers can turn
to disaster,'' Levine said. ``While silence may be golden in some
circumstances, with threats of violence or self-destruction, silence
can be deadly.''
The public defender's office, which represents about eight of
every 10 children arrested in Broward, was alarmed when informed of
the police report's contents.
``When you see a kid hanging, why the hell wouldn't you take the
kid down, unless you thought he was dead?'' said Mindy Solomon, the
public defender's juvenile division supervisor. ``When EMS comes to
the scene of a hanging, do they take pictures or take the kid down?
``My concern in having this information is for the safety of any
child in Broward County -- not only the PD's clients, but any child
in Broward County -- who could be in that facility.''
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