"He is gone but not forgotten. I am my son's voice."
Declares mother of 12 year old Michael Wiltsie in reaction to Marion Grand Jury's decision
not to indict Eckerd Youth Alternatives counselor in the restraint-related death of her son
Commentary by Barbe Stamps
According to a report published in the St. Petersburg Times on February 24, 2000, Michael Wiltsie was just 5 years old when his mother, Linda Ibarra, first tried to get her son help because of aggressive behavior.
After taking the boy to a mental health facility in March 1995 due to his aggressive behavior and suicide ideations, Michael was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity and opposition defiance disorder and placed on medication to control his mental health difficulties.
But at age 9, Michael got arrested for burglary and was given another mental examination that recommended immediate placement in a residential treatment facility to protect Michael and the community. A second examination at the same time recommended drug therapy, behavior modification and possibly residental treatment.
Instead, Michael was put on probation and was arrested several more times for charges that included battery, burglary, trespassing and resisting a police officer. In November 1999, a mental exam recommended once again that the young boy be given residential mental health care and treatment.
However, the State of Florida Department of Juvenile Justice recommended Wiltsie be placed in a "low risk residential treatment program". When the juvenile court ordered a medium risk alternative, Michael was sent to a wilderness camp for troubled boys called Camp E-Kel-Etu located in Ocala National Forest near Silver Springs.
A fateful decision that would ultimately cost Michael his life on February 5, 2000 and raise disturbing questions about who or what let "Mikey" down. The juvenile justice system which existed for his benefit but failed to protect him; the many doctors he had seen over the past 7 years or the camp counselor that restrained him.
In an "unusually quick" action, the Marion Grand Jury released a 4 page report on February 23, 2000 concluding that Joseph C. Cooley, 27, properly followed the restraint procedures he had been taught when he pinned the "combative" boy to the ground on February 4, 2000 and that the state is to blame for failing to provide proper mental health treatment for the troubled youth.
However, the grand jury determined that at nearly 300 pounds, the counselor's weight used during the restraint in contrast to Michael's weight of about 65 pounds, led to the young boy's death of "compressional asphyxiation".
In a statment to investigators on the day of the incident, Cooley claimed that he hadn't put any weight on Wiltsie and that he didn't believe the boy was having trouble breathing because he had a history of "bluffing". However, the grand jury report stated that when Michael became still after being restained by Cooley who had pinned his entire body to the floor, Cooley accused him of playing possum and continued the retraint for a short time before getting up.
After Michael still wasn't moving, Cooley reportedly saw that he wasn't breathing and began CPR while counselors called 911 and a nurse administered 2 shots of epinephrine to try to restart his heart.
Pronounced dead the following day at Shands at University of Florida in Gainseville, the grand jury agreed that "had Michael been placed in what we considered the obviously needed program earlier in his involvement with the juvenile justice system, he would not have been in Eckerd E-Kel-Etu camp"
A camp that according to the grand jury report, had required Wiltsie to discontinue taking Ritalin because of their policy of not accepting children on medication. In fact, some officials of the camp had initially objected to having Wiltsie in the program, apparently because of the boy's mental health needs.
Finding that under the circumstances Cooley "had followed the procedure which he and other counselors had used for many years and that no one who witnessed the restraint saw it as more forceful or long in length than other restraints", the grand jury could not say that the counselor acted with utter disregard for Michael's safety, as required in order to constitute manslaughter.
But that's not how Michael's grandmother sees it.
"He wouldn't have died if he (Cooley) hadn't crushed him to death," said Jacki Miller in a telephone interview with the St. Petersburg Times. "What is wrong with our judicial system these days? All the evidence, it was there that this guy did this. It's not fair. A little 12-year-old boy died from something that wasn't his fault."
Linda Ibarra who reportedly broke down after hearing the grand jury's decision, said that their report provided her with new details about the chain of events leading to her son's death.
"I didn't know he (Cooley) straddled him like a horse. If I as a mother did what this man did, I'd be in jail, wouldn't I? My Mikey weighed 65 pounds."
For Eckherd officials relieved that their counselor was not charged, President and CEO of Eckerd Youth Alternatives Karen V. Waddell issued a statement that declared "our whole organization remains in shock over the loss of Michael Wiltsie and we are in the process of grieving and healing".
Upon the recommendation of the grand jury that their organization consider "the size of the child be emphasized in determining how to restrain the child and that alternative restraint methods be taught," Eckherd officials said they are reviewing restraint procedures to see whether they should be changed.
Meanwhile, in a report published in the St. Petersburg Times on February 29, 2000, Michael's relatives said they have hired prominent Miami lawyer Ellis Rubin to represent them.
Rubin who held a news conference in front of the Marion Court House on February 28 said he hoped a special prosecutor would "come down to Ocala and give us justice".
Sitting nearby, Michael's sobbing relatives listened as Rubin further stated that Michael's death "is an injustice, an injustice that can not go on."
Calling for Governor Jeb Bush to appoint a special prosecutor who could resubmit the case to a grand jury or directly file criminal charges such as manslaughter, Rubin and the Wiltsies can only wait to see if justice will be served to satisfy Rubin's assertion that Michael "didn't have to die on that day".
Clearly, there is something terribly wrong with this picture. The picture of a heartbroken mother remembering one of the last conversations she had with her little boy. When he called from Camp E-Kel-Etu and told her that he had recently been restrained by a counselor.
"Momma, I was so scared. I'm never getting in trouble again, Momma," he said.
Sadly, Michael doesn't have to be scared anymore about getting in trouble.
As for the fate of Joseph Cooley, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice and the doctors, only time will tell if the scales of justice will tip in favor of "affirming and protecting the rights of children" instead of holding a defenseless boy accountable for his own tragic death.
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