Shinaul McGraw - 1994

12 year old Shinaul McGraw basically cooked to death. On a hot day the employees wrapped him in blankets. He was Shinaul suffering from Cornelia de Lange syndrome and hardly had any language.

So we was not able to tell the employees how hot he felt. The employees should have monitored him. Instead they just let him to die slowly.

It is not clear what the outcome of the investigation became. However it is clear that some kind of adjustment of the treatment approach should have been implemented. 12 years were all he was given. It was too short a time for any child.

May he find peace where he is now.

Sources:

• Disabled Boy May Have Died Of Heatstroke -- Independent Investigations Continue (Seattle Times)
• Questions surround death of boy. (Seattle Times)

Omar Paisley - 2003

The life of 17-year-old Omar Paisley could have been saved. All it would take was to grant him an examination in a sickwing. The employees at Miami Dade Regional JDC failed to grant him this and as result of this he died a painful death due to ruptured appendix.

Only two nurses were charged but the failure was within the entire system. Each guard, each superintendent could have made the ruling to demand an examination of this young man. Efforts were made to change the system but the problem was rooted in the number of teenagers sent to detention facilities inside this state. There were simply too few options to juvenile detention.

So teenagers continue to die in the system.

It is not the legacy this young man deserved.

May he find peace where he is now.

Sources:

• Youth died amid chaos, confusion (Project Nospank - from Miami Herald)
• Nurses indicted in death of teen at Florida facility (CNN)
• Staff disciplined after jailed Florida teen’s death (Miami Herald)

Jerry Trivett - 2003

Jerry Trivett suffered from an illness which was costly to treat. Tumors grew in his system. His mother couldn't afford proper treatment of the illness and he ended up being thrown around the foster care system. The illness affected his behavior and even foster families often had to return him so he could go to a new place.

He ended up in an over-crowded for-profit facility named High Pointe in Oklahoma. Here he got into a fight with another patients and he got slammed to the ground. He suffered a lot of pain over the next days but his pleas to be taken to the hospital just down the road for an examination was ignored. When they in the end allowed him to be transported to the hospital after losing consciousness they didn't mention the fight, so he was not treated in the proper way.

Maybe he had suffered internal damage and was slowly bleeding to down. We don't know because none tend to have paid an interest in him. Only when he died the system who send him to the facility started to look for fall-guys. While the facility was closed 9 months later only people on the ground suffered consequences due to his untimely death.

It seems that the system was meant to cost him his life. Where were the support for the foster families so they could have taken care of him with extra help to their homes? Where was the support for his birth mother in the first place so she could have taken care of his treatment appointments so he didn't have to be placed in the foster system?

15 years was all he was allowed before he died.

May he find peace where he is now.

Sources:

• From Pennsylvania to Oklahoma - and the end of the line at age 15 (Philadelphia Media Network)
• DHS has far to go to protect these kids About 200 live in out-of-state centers that the Phila. agency still struggles to monitor. (Philadelphia Media Network)