WAYCROSS, Ga. — Georgia will pay $4.5 million to settle a lawsuit over a teenager’s 2022 death at the state-run Waycross Regional Youth Detention Center, the family’s attorneys announced this week. The Department of Juvenile Justice reached the deal with the parents of the boy, who was 17 when he died.
The settlement resolves a federal lawsuit the parents filed in June 2023 against the agency, the facility’s then-director and a juvenile correctional officer. The suit argued the teen’s Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment was violated and that staff delayed medical care that might have saved him.
According to the complaint, the officer set up what court papers called a fight game between two detained teens on Aug. 9, 2022, taking them into a closet out of view of security cameras. The other youth struck the 17-year-old in the neck and he lost consciousness. Rather than get immediate medical help, the suit said, the officer and other detainees carried him to a shower and tried to wake him, and no one called 911 for at least 10 minutes.
The teen was taken to a local hospital and then flown to a Savannah hospital, where he died two days later. A medical examiner traced his death to a torn artery in the neck, known as a vertebral artery dissection, from the blow he took. The lawsuit also alleged that staff at the facility routinely arranged or allowed fights among detainees and that the director knew of the practice but did not stop it.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested the officer on Aug. 16, 2022, on charges including second-degree murder, cruelty to children and violation of oath of office, and the agency fired him the same day. Prosecutors secured a six-count felony indictment against him in July 2023 that added three counts of influencing a witness tied to claims he told detainees to lie to investigators. That criminal case remains pending, and his attorney is challenging the indictment.
The GBI also brought a juvenile complaint for involuntary manslaughter against the youth involved in the fight. Tyrone Oliver, who led the Department of Juvenile Justice at the time, called the officer’s conduct deplorable in a 2022 statement. Gov. Brian Kemp later named Oliver to run the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Section: More Atlanta GA crime news
Filed under: Atlanta GA Public Safety News
