Years after a child was killed by a poorly-maintained wall in Lassen Volcanic National Park, the Department of the Interior inspector general is investigating allegations of a cover-up by government officials.
Darlene Koontz, Lassen’s superintendent since 2007, retired in October just weeks after the IG began its probe.
Nine-year-old Tommy Botell was killed in 2009 while hiking with his family after the retaining wall on which he and his sister were sitting collapsed and crushed them. His 13-year-old sister sustained serious facial fractures but survived.
Steve Campora, the family’s lawyer, said the Botells had visited the park to celebrate the birthday of Tommy’s father.
Campora said a piece of the rock wall weighing nearly 800 pounds rolled over the children while the parents watched. After the dust settled, Tommy told his mother “Mom, I can’t see,” before dying, Campora said.
The Bottels filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the park service, which settled the case for $3.5 million last year.
But the court proceedings revealed more than possible neglect of a park wall. Lassen employees are now under investigation for possible perjury and destruction of evidence in the case.
Court documents said “it has become all too apparent” that park staff “purposely destroyed material evidence in this case.” The magistrate judge accused park officials of removing the crumbled wall before it could be examined.
“There is no doubt that the scene of the accident, i.e., the remaining part of the wall, was important for investigative purposes,” the documents said.
The court found “highly suspicious” evidence suggesting park officials tampered with other evidence in the case by shredding documents and deleting emails they should have been instructed to keep. Park staff who did so claimed they were never told to hold onto such records.
Lassen’s chief of maintenance testified that he shredded all of his files, including those containing “visitor safety issues,” before he retired at the end of 2010.
The court documents also suggested Koontz “lied under penalty of perjury” about whether she deliberately stalled an internal investigation.
A court document outlining a timeline of events in the case revealed Lassen officials rejected the required National Park Service investigation in favor of an “in-house investigation,” which delayed the NPS probe for more than three weeks.
During that time, Koontz ordered the remaining parts of the wall to be destroyed, the document said.
Despite testifying during her deposition that no one ever tried to interview her about the incident, Koontz refused the NPS investigator’s requests for an interview, the document said.
Koontz ordered “strong language regarding the condition of the retaining walls” to be removed from a draft report that was later destroyed, other court documents said.
The report’s author said “those were the worst walls she had ever seen,” Campora said, although he said the sanitized report never made it into court.
Campora said Koontz had received a recommendation to close the unsafe trail at least a year before Tommy’s death.
“The superintendent had specifically been advised by park service employees that the trail was dangerous, that the rock walls could no longer support the trail and it should be closed,” Campora said. “She refused to consider that.”
Safety concerns about the walls surfaced in memos as early as 1994, Campora said.
Koontz also falsely said the park had no policies in place for inspecting the walls despite having written those policies herself, Campora said.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-California, pressed the Interior Department’s inspector general to investigate the claims in September, citing park staff’s “gross and negligent behavior.”
Speier told the Washington Examiner she “wasn’t satisfied” with the agency’s handling of the case.
“Since I sent my letter, the inspector general informed my office that they have reopened their investigation of misconduct. Our park facilities need to be safe, and when those responsible for safety fail, they should face the consequences,” she said.
