No investigation into the death of Janice Campbell

Most of us are still trying to scrape our jaws off the floor following Monday's news about the death of Janice Campbell in Denton State School.  Via the Star-Telegram, we learn more details about her death:

On Monday afternoon, Cecilia Fedorov of Aging and Disability Services gave this account of the incident:

A male resident who was running through one of the school’s building was asked to stop, Fedorov said. The man has an IQ of 20 or less, she said.

He stopped and threw up his hands, she said.

At about that time, Campbell came around a corner and bumped into him, causing her to fall backwards and hit her head on the floor, Fedorov said.

Staff members were with the man and Campbell when the accident happened, Fedorov said.

"It was just a tragic, tragic accident," she said.

State officials found no wrongdoing in Janice's death.  The man implicated, however he was involved, should not be punished because he is not at fault, regardless of DADS' pathetic attempts to hide behind his meaningless and arbitrary IQ score.

However, it is worth noting that officials at Denton State School never filed a report to investigate Janice's death.  They called the police to report the incident, but "Because we never got a report, there’s been no investigation," Denton police spokesman Ryan Grelle said Monday.

This is beyond sketchy to me.  What kind of agency who publicly claims to have a commitment to protecting people and holding themselves to the highest standard of scrutiny fails to request an investigation into an unexpected death?  If indeed it was an accident, an investigation would confirm that and DADS and Denton State School should have nothing to fear.      

But the fact remains that we just can't take DADS at their word anymore.  As one poster on our e-mail listserv noted this morning:

"Given what we already know about the [state schools], how can we believe that what was reported was the truth? How do we know a staff person did not do this? How hard does someone need to be shoved to hit their head on the floor hard enough to kill them? Pretty dang hard, I would guess. It is way [too] easy to blame this on someone with the functioning level of a 6 [month old] who cannot communicate to defend themselves."

Hold DADS and Denton State School accountable.  Enough said.