A 12-year-old boy found dead after spending the night in a tiny tent at a North Carolina wilderness therapy camp earlier this year may have suffocated in that tent, a staff member assigned to check his breathing in the night told state investigators.
Staff at Trails Carolina did not visually check the boy overnight and reported that they “thought” they heard him breathing at required checks in the night, at 12 a.m., 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., but the boy was dead and cold at 7:45 a.m. when staffers tried to wake him, according to a lengthy inspection report obtained by the Charlotte Observer from the state Department of Health and Human Services.
“I didn’t check as thoroughly as I should have,” the staffer assigned to do those night checks told investigators, according to the report. “My actions that night night was to perform night checks … that was my responsibility, which I failed on. … I do feel like the bivy (tent) had a lot to do with it.”
Investigators asked what the staffer could have done differently that night. “I could have opened [the tent] up, repositioned him,” said the staffer, who replied “yes” when asked if they thought the boy suffocated.
The boy was found dead on the morning of February 3, a day after he arrived at the therapy camp, as CrimeOnline reported. On his first day, he was required to sleep in the bivy, a small tent that limits movement that has an alarm attached after the camper falls asleep. Staffers also sleep next to children in the bivy — “at arm’s length.”
By the time first responders arrived on the scene, staffers had taken him out of the bivy and crumpled it into a corner, but staff said they boy had somehow turned around in the tent, and his feet were facing the opposite direction than they should have been.
One of the other campers told investigators that no one likes to sleep in the bivy and that it was difficult to get help while in one. “You have to tap them (staff) somehow,” the camper said. ” … You roll on top of them … It’s really hard to wake staff up.”
Trails Carolina responded Wednesday saying the state report was “inaccurate and misleading in many respects,” despite it being made up almost entirely of interviews with staff, campers, and their parents or guardians, the Observer said. The organization said it was working with the state agency “to clarify and correct where needed.”
“Most importantly, the cause of death has yet to be released by the medical examiner, and, in the meantime, statements by anyone beyond those with authority and direct access to specifics of the autopsy are nothing more than speculation,” the organization said.
State authorities shut down the facility in February and said in March they planned to take steps to revoke its license. The report, completed on March 21, details several deficiences, including how the organization manages medications for what it calls its “students.”
And the 12-year-old wasn’t the first to die while experiencing Trails Carolina. A 17-year-old Atlanta boy, Alec Lansing, ran away from his group in November. He climbed a tree, fell out — breaking his hip — and died where he landed, in a creek. His body was found 12 days later.
The Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office told the Observer they were still awaiting the medical examiner’s report as well as forensics analysis of computers seized from Trails Carolina. Their investigation continues.
