The NAACP demanded Wednesday that the federal government bring civil rights charges against Bowling Brook Preparatory School counselors in the death of a Baltimore teenager who lay unconscious for more than a half-hour before the counselors called 911.
“We said from the beginning we felt we had a flawed system,” said Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, head of the Baltimore chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The demand for civil rights charges came a day after a judge dismissed reckless-endangerment charges against five counselors at the Keymar-based school for juvenile offenders.
Cheatham said the national organization supports the request for civil rights charges.
The counselors at Bowling Brook, which is now closed, were indicted on reckless-endangerment charges for allegedly failing to call 911 until 41 minutes after Isaiah Simmons III, 17, of East Baltimore, stopped breathing.
State Sen. Catherine Pugh D-Baltimore, said it was “appalling that the counselors waited so long to call 911.”
Counselors held Simmons face-down on the ground for nearly three hours after the teen?s outburst, Carroll County prosecutors said, and the state medical examiner ruled the January 2007 death a homicide.
Simmons was sent to Bowling Brook after being convicted of armed robbery.
Carroll County Circuit Judge Michael Galloway threw out the charges Tuesday, saying reckless endangerment excludes inaction, such as failing to call 911.
Reckless endangerment, Galloway said, covers only actions that create a “substantial risk of serious injury or death,” according to the ruling.
Simmons? family and civil rights leaders have rallied for felony manslaughter charges.
But because the counselors were not indicted on charges of killing Simmons, defense attorneys argued, the restraint has nothing to do with the alleged crime.
