'They watched her die': Teen dies hours after arriving at juvenile detention center in front of employees who did nothing, lawsuit says.



Elbert Shaw Regional Youth Detention Center in Dalton, Georgia . Alexis Marie Sluder.

A 16-year-old runaway died after overdosing on methamphetamine in a youth detention center in Georgia hours after she was arrested, and authorities did nothing as they watched her convulse, writhe in pain and cry for help until it was too late, her family alleges in a lawsuit filed this week.

Alexis Marie Sluder died in 2022 at the Elbert Shaw Regional Youth Detention Center in Dalton, according to the lawsuit filed on Tuesday in a federal court in Georgia. Dalton is about 90 miles north of Atlanta.

“Instead of monitoring her health and safety, they watched her die,” said Sam Harton, the family’s lawyer, in a news conference . “No one even picked up the phone to call 911 until after Alexis stopped breathing.”

Related Coverage:
The lawsuit names five Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice employees as defendants, including an officer, a cadet, a sergeant, a nurse, and the facility’s director. It also names Augusta University, the medical and mental health services provider for juvenile detainees at the facility.

In a statement , the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice said it “is committed to the well-being and safety of the individuals entrusted to our care. We remain deeply saddened by this tragic incident and continue to hold heartfelt thoughts and prayers for the family of the deceased.”

A media representative for Augusta University did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The events leading to Sluder’s death began after her arrest for possession of methamphetamine and shoplifting on Aug. 26, 2022, court documents said. She was issued a ticket and jailed before being transferred to Elbert, where she was booked at 9 p.m.

Upon booking, Gilmer County Sgt. Sharon Ellis “failed to note that methamphetamine or any other foreign substance was found on Alexis Sluder’s person,” even though she had noted she saw a white substance on the police vehicle seat next to Sluder earlier, the lawsuit said.

Notes in her medical screening indicated Sluder had “medical problems,” had previously been hospitalized, and was taking medication. Sluder had depression, bipolar anxiety, and schizophrenia, the lawsuit said.

In her mental health screening, when asked why she was at the facility, Sluder said, “because I ran away.” She also said she had attempted suicide, had recently been sexually abused, had been hospitalized for an overdose the previous month and “sometimes sees shadow people that are not there,” court documents said. Her answers warranted four “Warning” and four “Caution” notations.

Sluder’s answers about drug and alcohol use were “explicitly excluded from the ‘Warning’ and ‘Caution’ totals,” court documents said.

Sluder told authorities that just before she was about to be arrested before arriving at the facility, she “ate the meth she had on her when the cops came and she realized she might be going to jail” and “she had taken other unknown items earlier in the day as she felt suicidal over the last 3 weeks and currently feels this way,” court documents said.

Ellis declined to take her to the hospital, saying she wasn’t permitted to because she had already released her into the custody of the state of Georgia, “so she no longer had jurisdiction to transport Alexis Sluder,” court documents said.

Instead, Sluder was placed in a room equipped with a live video feed where she could be constantly monitored.

In her cell, Sluder began to suffer a medical emergency. She convulsed, writhed in pain, thrashed about, sweated profusely, and breathed heavily. The overdose symptoms lasted over four hours, court documents said.

Despite an employee, Rebecka Phillips, being with Sluder the entire time, a second employee, Maveis Brooks, being with her intermittently, and Cadet Russell Ballard watching via the video feed from a control room, no one did anything, the lawsuit alleges.

During the final two hours of the medical emergency, Sluder lay on the ground, nearly motionless. At one point, Sluder even reached out and grasped toward the ankle of Phillips, who stood over her, watched, and did nothing to help her, court documents said.

At another point, Sluder turned to the camera and said, “Someone please help me. I took something,” the lawsuit alleges.

The defendants talked about the girl’s condition but didn’t act, saying they did not have enough officers on staff to take her to a hospital without violating a policy, court documents said.

“There is no policy set forth by the State of Georgia, the Department of Justice, and the Dalton RYDC preventing State employees from calling 9-1-1 or another emergency medical services to transport juveniles to the hospital in a medical emergency,” the lawsuit said. “Alexis Sluder was not suspected of a violent crime. Alexis Sluder was not arrested for a violent crime. There was no legitimate penological interest in keeping Alexis Sluder from going to the hospital.”

At 3:12 a.m. on Aug. 27, 2022, Phillips advised over the radio that Sluder “was not breathing properly,” the lawsuit said.

Brooks went to the cell, assessed Sluder and advised Ballard in the control room to call 911.

“Soon after Sergeant Maveis Brooks advised Defendant Cadet Ballard to call 9-1-1, Alexis Sluder stopped breathing,” court documents said.

The 911 call was made, and Brooks and Phillips began lifesaving measures, but Sluder was pronounced dead from methamphetamine toxicity at 4:26 a.m. on Aug. 27, 2022, court documents said.

The five employees were terminated from their jobs stemming from the death. They were indicted on charges of cruelty to children a year later, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a statement . Their cases are pending.

The parents have shared their pain over the death of their daughter, who once won an award for “Prettiest Smile,” enjoyed playing softball and was set to graduate from Gilmer High School this year. Instead, her school reserved a seat for her at the ceremony on May 24, where she graduated posthumously.

“I didn’t get to watch her pick out her first car, go to the prom, or graduate this past year with her friends,” her mother, Melanie Hogan Sluder, said in a statement . “I am lost without her, and not a minute goes by that I don’t think about her and what she would be doing.”

1918 Nebraska serial killer poisons her first victim.

Della Sorenson kills the first of her seven victims in rural Nebraska by poisoning her sister-in-law’s infant daughter, Viola Cooper. Over the next seven years, friends, relatives, and acquaintances of Sorenson died under mysterious circumstances before anyone finally realized that it had to be more than a coincidence.

Two years after little Viola met her demise, Wilhelmina Weldam, Sorenson’s mother-in-law, was poisoned. Sorenson then went after her own family, killing her daughter, Minnie, and husband, Joe, over a two-week period in September.

Waiting only four months before marrying again, Sorenson then settled in Dannebrog, Neb. In August 1922, her former sister-in-law came to visit with another infant, four-month-old Clifford. Just as she had done with Viola, Sorenson poisoned the poor child with a piece of candy. The unfortunate Mrs. Cooper, still oblivious to what was happening, came back again in October to visit with yet another child. This time, Sorenson’s poison didn’t work.

Early in 1923, Sorenson killed her own daughter, Delia, on her first birthday. When Sorenson’s friend brought her infant daughter for a visit only a week later, the tiny infant was also poisoned. After an attempt on Sorenson’s second husband’s life left him sick–but not dead–authorities began to think that there might be a connection between these series of deaths.

Finally, in 1925, Sorenson was arrested when she made an unsuccessful attempt at killing two children in the neighborhood with poisoned cookies. She confessed to the crimes, saying, “I like to attend funerals. I’m happy when someone is dying.” Sentiments like this convinced doctors that Sorenson was schizophrenic, and she was committed to the state mental asylum.

A teenaged mother gives birth and murders her baby at the prom.

Eighteen-year-old Melissa Drexler gives birth to a baby boy in the bathroom stall at an Aberdeen Township banquet hall in New Jersey during her high school prom. Maintenance workers called to clean up blood found in the stall discover a bag in the garbage with her dead baby inside. An autopsy later revealed that the baby had been born alive but had been strangled to death.

Drexler’s case drew national attention and outrage, especially since she returned to the dance floor after killing her newborn baby. It was also somewhat curious that she had managed to conceal her pregnancy from everyone she knew.

After arriving at the Lacey Township High School prom with her friends, Drexler immediately went to the women’s bathroom. With her unsuspecting friends outside the stall, she gave birth to her baby boy in about 20 or 30 minutes. She reportedly told her friend, “Go tell the boys I’ll be right out.” Apparently, Drexler cut the umbilical cord on the edge of a metal sanitary napkin box in the stall. Blood tests revealed that she had no trace of drugs or alcohol in her system.

Prosecutors in Monmouth County initially charged Drexler with murder, but she pled guilty to aggravated manslaughter on August 21, 1998. Telling the court that she was remorseful for her actions, on October 29 the teary-eyed girl was sentenced to 15 years in prison with the possibility of parole in three years. She was released on parole after 37 months on November 26, 2001.

1997 NYC teacher Jonathan Levin is tortured and killed by his former student.

Jonathan Levin, a popular 31-year-old English teacher, is stabbed and shot to death in his Upper West Side apartment in New York City. The son of Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin, Jonathan was known by many to be wealthy. When he did not show up for work, investigators searched his apartment and found his lifeless body bound to a chair with duct tape. Levin’s bankcard was missing from his wallet, and $800 had been removed from his account around the time that he was killed.

Police learned from Levin’s answering machine tape that Corey Arthur, a former student in Levin’s remedial English class at William H. Taft High School in the Bronx, called Levin on May 30 to arrange a meeting. Apparently, Arthur and his accomplice, Montoun Hart, tortured Levin with a kitchen knife in order to get him to tell them his debit card code. They turned on the vacuum cleaner and stereo to cover up his screams.

Arthur, arrested a week after the murders, first claimed that he had been at Levin’s apartment smoking crack when two other men came in and killed him. However, his story lost its credibility at trial when his fingerprints were found on the duct tape. Even still, Arthur denied being the one who pulled the trigger of the fatal shot.

Arthur was found guilty of second-degree murder and received 25 years to life in prison. Hart, despite his 11-page signed confession, was acquitted after convincing jurors that the confession had been coerced out of him when he was drunk.

The verdict is welcome

https://informationsite.in/bhilwara-furnace-case-culprits-sentenced-to-death/

#InformationSite
#Bhilwara #Rajasthan #RajasthanNews #BhilwaraNews

At 15, Danielle Vaughan was left in the care of her mother’s friend, who was then a 50 year old man. They became romantically involved, Danielle got pregnant, and Vaughan was a mother by the time she was 17. They married and eventually had four children. Their youngest was named Dennis. Dennis Vaughan Jr. was born in 2014, the fourth of Danielle Vaughan children.
Vaughan, now 33, has led a life marred by abuse. She remembered her mother, Sherry Connor, as erratic and prone to violent outbursts.
Danielle’s husband grew controlling and violent. Both of them started using drugs. Dennis Sr. has been repeatedly arrested for drugs. In 2016, police raided the family’s Laconia home, arresting Dennis Sr. — and Vaughan lost custody of her four children.
“That was the beginning of a horrible four years,” she said, but she was willing to move mountains to get her children back.
She kicked heroin. She went to her appointments. She found stable housing, away from Dennis Sr. She worked to piece together a life and prove she could care for her children.
In the summer of 2017, a court granted custody of the four children to Vaughan’s mother, Sherry. Vaughan had reservations about the arrangement, after the way she had grown up.
“I knew my mom had that mean bone in her body,” she said. But she wanted to believe she would love and care for her grandchildren.
Before long, Vaughan said, she started noticing the children had bruises on their wrists or their ears. One of the children was hospitalized with a concussion. Connor would always have an explanation, Vaughan said.
Then during one visit, Vaughan noticed finger-shaped bruises around her children’s chins. “I knew those bruises. I knew what they were from.”
Vaughan said her mother used to grab her by the chin, almost lifting her off the floor as she yelled, “Now you look at me.”
All the children were too skinny, Vaughan said. On a visit to Connor’s home for Christmas in 2018, she discovered their deplorable living conditions.
Connor’s home in Laconia was vile, Vaughan said, with human and dog feces on the floor. She kept the refrigerator and cabinets locked, so the children — 4-year-old Dennis and the three older children — couldn’t get food or drinks themselves. When they got too thirsty, Vaughan said, they drank out of the toilet — and were punished for it. They used a bucket to go to the bathroom.
After that visit, Vaughan figures she called DCYF every day.
But the division screened out her reports, or the cases were closed as “unfounded,” she said, meaning an investigation did not turn up abuse or neglect.
One day, Vaughan got a voicemail from her mother, who seemed to have dialed by mistake. Vaughan could hear a hand smacking flesh, her third-oldest child screaming, and her mother screaming back. “I hate you, you dirty dog,” she screamed, cursing at the 8-year-old, Vaughan remembered. “I can’t wait for someone to take you away.”
Vaughan made another report, she said.
In July 2019, Vaughan said, her mother duct-taped that same child to a chair and left him overnight in an Epsom campground. Other people in the campground called police. DCYF petitioned a court to remove the child from Connor on an emergency basis, and returned him to Vaughan.
Vaughan said she is still not clear about why the division removed only one of her children from Connor’s care in the summer of 2019 — but did not move to get her other three children, including Dennis Jr., out of Connor’s home.
By this time, Vaughan said she was calling for help multiple times a day. She called the Office of the Child Advocate, an ombudsman’s office, police, every authority she could think of. She was frantic.
“I was begging to put them anywhere else but her house,” Vaughan said.
On Christmas Eve 2019, Vaughan went into work early for her cleaning job at Elliot Hospital.
She was there less than an hour that Tuesday morning when a state police sergeant asked to talk to her. She felt a knot in her stomach as they walked into an empty room.
“He looks at me and says, ‘Dennis is dead.’”
3 years later, Danielle is still trying to get answers about how exactly her son died. In May 2020, an autopsy performed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Dennis died of blunt force trauma to the head and neck, and ruled the death a homicide.
No one has been charged, Associate Attorney General Jeffery A. Strelzin said the investigation is still open.
Vaughan is trying to understand how the child welfare system failed her family so utterly.

Dana Nicole Bradley
(July 24, 1967 - December 18, 1981)
Dana passed away when she was 14 years old. She disappeared on the evening of December 14, 1981, while hitchhiking on Topsail Road in St. John's, Newfoundland. She had been at a friend's home after school and was on her way home to a family birthday party. When she did not arrive, the family reported her missing to the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. Her body was found in a wooded area on the Maddox Cove Road south of St. John's four days after she disappeared. Her skull had been fractured by a blunt object and she had been sexually assaulted. In 1986, a man confessed to killing Dana, but later recanted, saying that the confession had been coerced, and all charges against him were dropped. No one else has ever been charged, and so far, Dana's murder remains unsolved.
Dana was a sweet, beautiful, and smart young girl. At the time of her death she was a ninth grader and reportedly made good grades. She is greatly missed by her friends and family.
Rest in peace, Dana!

Jeanette Maples, a 16-year-old girl residing in Eugene, Oregon, had a passion for reading during her time at Cascade Middle School from 2006. However, after completing eighth grade in 2008, she transitioned to being homeschooled under the registration of Lane Education Service District. Jeanette lived with her mother, Angela McAnulty, and Angela's husband, Richard McAnulty.
On the evening of December 9, 2009, just before 8 PM, authorities received a distress call from the residence on Howard Avenue. Inside, they found Jeanette unconscious and injured in the bathtub. Angela claimed that Jeanette had been sleeping in the living room when she suddenly stopped breathing.
Jeanette was swiftly taken to Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield, but she was pronounced dead upon arrival. Upon initial examination, it became apparent that Jeanette had endured prolonged abuse and starvation. Dr. Daniel Davis, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, stated that Jeanette had suffered such extensive harm from various sources that he couldn't determine which specific injury had caused her death. Her body had wasted away, devoid of fat and with minimal muscle tissue.
The effects of starvation alone could have been fatal, but Jeanette's body exhibited numerous injuries in different stages of healing. Over 200 injuries were observed, many resulting from blunt force inflicted by a manufactured object with a straight, machined edge. Dr. Davis discovered a hole at the back of Jeanette's head, causing bleeding in her brain. Furthermore, Jeanette had pneumonia in the form of an abscessed lung, which might have introduced bacteria into her bloodstream, leading to shock and eventual demise.

The tragic story of Shaniya Davis

Shaniya Davis was a five-year-old girl who was sold by her mother, Antoinette Davis, to a man named Mario McNeill on November 10, 2009. This shocking event would lead to a series of events that would ultimately result in the death of Shaniya, a preschooler who had her whole life ahead of her.

After being sold to McNeill to cover a debt of $200, Shaniya was taken to a hotel, where she was sexually assaulted and murdered. Her body was later discovered in a wooded area in North Carolina. The details of her death are truly heartbreaking, and it is difficult to imagine the pain and suffering she must have endured in those final moments.

The tragic nature of Shaniya's death led to widespread media attention and both Antoinette Davis and Mario McNeill were arrested and charged in connection with her death. Antoinette Davis was charged with human trafficking, felony child abuse, and filing a false police report, while McNeill was charged with first-degree murder, rape of a child, and kidnapping.

The trial was emotionally charged, and the details that emerged during the proceedings were nothing short of horrific. Shaniya's death is a reminder of the unimaginable cruelty that can be inflicted upon innocent children, and her memory will continue to serve as a call to action to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future.

Shaniya's family and community mourned her loss deeply, with many calling for justice and accountability. The case also brought attention to the issue of child trafficking and the need for greater awareness and intervention to protect vulnerable children from such atrocities.

In the end, McNeill was sentenced to death, while Antoinette Davis received a sentence of 17 years to life in prison. While justice was served in some sense, the loss of Shaniya's life remains a tragedy that will never be forgotten. Her memory will serve as a reminder of the importance of protecting children and preventing such senseless acts of violence from occurring in the future.