Company, worker enter 'no contest'
pleas in death
By Eileen Nimm
December 7, 2006
No contest pleas were entered in
Barron County Circuit Court this Wednesday morning by the
corporation and employee charged in the suffocation death of 7-year
old Angellika Arndt (pictured at right).
Attorney for the Rice Lake Day
Treatment Center, Lewis Wasserman of Milwaukee, entered a plea of no
contest to homicide under the patient abuse statute.
Wasserman was assisted by John
Behling of Eau Claire, who is the civil attorney for Northwest
Counseling and Guidance Clinic, which owned and operated the now
defunct center. The clinic is based in Frederic.
A former employee of the center,
Bradley Ridout, 29, of 20 E. Evans St., Rice Lake, pled no contest
to misdemeanor negligent patient abuse in his use of a control hold
on Arndt, which resulted in her death.
Judge Edward Brunner accepted the
pleas and set sentencing for Wednesday, Dec. 27 at 1 p.m.
The maximum penalty for the
homicide conviction is a fine of up to $100,000. The maximum penalty
for the misdemeanor conviction is not more than 9 months
imprisonment and/or a fine of up to $10,000.
Arndt’s foster parents, Dan and
Donna Pavlik of Ladysmith, were present as were about 15 members of
Ridout’s family.
“My entire family and I wish to
express our deep sadness over the loss of Angie,” Ridout said in a
statement issued to the press following the hearing.
“I regret that any of my actions to
help protect this girl may have actually caused her harm,” he wrote.
“I understand the demand for personal responsibility. I hope that my
decision not to contest the charge is the first step in allowing
everyone involved with this tragedy to begin to heal, and to move
forward.”
Ridout is represented by attorney
Tim O’Brien of New Richmond.
Arndt was a client of the Rice Lake
Day Treatment Center owned by the clinic, which provides intensive
intervention and preventative mental health services for youths.
According to the criminal
complaint, Ridout had placed Arndt in a control hold at the clinic
on May 25, and she suffocated from the pressure and could not be
revived. She was airlifted to Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis,
where she died the following day.
The no contest pleas were part of a
plea agreement entered into by the corporation, Ridout, Assistant
Attorney General William Hanrahan and Barron County District
Attorney Angela Holmstrom.
As part of the plea agreement,
Hanrahan plans to argue for the maximum fine for the corporation.
Both parties are free to argue in Ridout’s case.
The corporation also agreed to
enter into a 2-year corporate integrity agreement enforced by the
Department of Justice.
That agreement requires Northwest
Counseling and Guidance Clinic to draft and implement a new written
policy concerning the use of control holds in all of its programs
within 6 months of signing the agreement.
The clinic owns and operates about
a dozen centers in the state.
The agreement states that control
holds may only be used under emergency circumstances, as a last
resort and solely for the prevention of likely great bodily harm or
death.
All direct care staff will be
retrained in the use of safe restraint techniques. Prompt
post-restraint evaluations will be conducted by a team and
documented and that documentation evaluated by a physician, the
agreement stated.
The agreement also required
Northwest Counseling and Guidance Clinic to cease operation of the
Rice Lake Day Treatment Center.
Wednesday was the day set for an
initial hearing on the charges. Both parties waived their initial
hearings and moved into the plea hearing. Brunner said that when no
contest pleas are entered, the court finds the parties guilty.
Brunner retains the right to
disregard the plea agreement and impose the maximum penalties.
At the request of Holmstrom,
Brunner set bail for Ridout at a $1,000 signature bond.
Investigative report
A 5-month investigation into
Arndt’s death found that the center had a “highly ambiguous
restraint policy” for using the control hold for behavioral
problems.
In an affidavit concerning his
investigation, John Knappmiller, chief investigator for the
Wisconsin Department of Justice, stated that because Arndt’s
“defiant and aggressive behavior” was not addressed by medical
professionals “in a timely fashion,” untrained staff had to resort
to using control holds as a means of discipline.
The investigation also revealed
that Arndt’s caretakers at an Eau Claire facility, where she was a
client just before coming to the Rice Lake center, were never
required to physically restrain her.
In addition, there were “numerous
acts and omissions by employees of the facility that had compromised
Arndt’s safety.”
Holmstrom said in a news release
issued Friday that the charges followed a 5-month investigation by
the Rice Lake Police Department and the Wisconsin Department of
Justice.
She said the charges against the
corporation and Ridout were appropriate for the levels of
culpability each of the defendants shared in the death of Angellika.
The homicide charge was filed by
Hanrahan. The misdemeanor charge was filed by Holmstrom.
Knappmiller’s affidavit listed the
findings that led to the criminal charges.
He wrote that before Ridout was
summoned to assist another employee in the restraint of Arndt, Arndt
was lying face down on a thinly carpeted cement floor in the
cool-down room of the center.
The other employee restrained
Arndt’s legs while Ridout covered Arndt’s upper torso with his own,
initially supporting the majority of his weight by his elbows.
During this lengthy period of
restraint, Arndt was crying, screaming and resisting his efforts to
restrain her, Knappmiller wrote. During the later course of the
restraint, Ridout reached over and attempted to control Arndt’s
head, which was thrashing about, he wrote.
After Ridout had restrained Arndt
for a period of about 30 minutes, Arndt became calm and ultimately,
listless, wrote Knappmiller. Although initially believing that she
had fallen asleep, Ridout, upon rolling Arndt over, observed that
she had turned a bluish color and was nonresponsive, he wrote.
Attempts at reviving Arndt were unsuccessful, Knappmiller wrote.
The Hennepin County, Minn., medical
examiner ruled that Arndt’s death was caused by positional asphyxia.
A review of records revealed that Arndt died in the course of
Ridout’s restraint. His body weight upon her back significantly
impaired and ultimately precluded her ability to breathe,
Knappmiller wrote.
According to the criminal
complaint, Ridout told Rice Lake Police Department investigator
Chris Fitzgerald that he was summoned to relieve another employee
who had been holding Arndt in a full control hold on the floor at
about 12:50 p.m.
Ridout said the control hold he
performed on Arndt consisted of lying to the side of her, placing
his chest into her side and placing his right arm over her body with
his right elbow on the ground on the other side of her. Ridout said
he then placed his left hand on Arndt’s head to keep it from moving.
Ridout’s body was holding Arndt down on the floor so she could not
move, the complaint stated.
Ridout said at some point during
the hold Arndt appeared to relax as if she was sleeping. He said
after about 10 minutes he started to process her out of the control
hold. She was not responsive. Ridout said he shook her and did not
get a response. He then turned her over and saw that she was blue.
Ridout said he started
cardiopulmonary resuscitation while another employee called 911. The
911 call was made at 1:31 p.m., about 41 minutes after Ridout
commenced his full control hold on Arndt on the floor of the cool-
down room at the day treatment center, the complaint stated.
Also in his summary, Knappmiller
wrote that there were a number of acts and omissions by employees of
the facility that had compromised Arndt’s safety.
However, none of those acts or
omissions had sufficient evidence to support criminal charges beyond
a reasonable doubt, Knappmiller wrote.
The acts and omissions listed
were that:
• When Arndt was admitted to the
Rice Lake center, staff failed to adequately consult records
containing the medical/psychological history of Arndt, including the
evaluations of interventions used in her placement at the Eau Claire
facility.
• Essential staff failed to consult
the treatment plan prepared for Arndt upon admission prior to
providing services to her.
• Although the facility maintained
the authority to restrain Arndt, insufficient guidance was provided
to staff members in the proper implementation of the facility’s
highly ambiguous written restraint policy.
“This internally inconsistent
policy inadequately defined what circumstances required restraint
vesting broad decision-making authority in largely unskilled staff,”
Knappmiller wrote.
• The “emergency” restraint policy
became the justification for the almost daily physical restraint of
Arndt.
• Failure of internal
communications, inadequate record keeping and a lack of coherent
supervisory oversight contributed to the failure to adequately
respond to the behavioral needs of Arndt.
Knappmiler wrote that, “Despite
having a physician and registered nurse on staff, evidence of a
pattern of defiance and aggressive behavior by Arndt was not
addressed by medical professionals or a multidisciplinary team in a
timely fashion, resulting in the defacto use of restraint as a
disciplinary measure.
“Consultation with the Eau Claire
facility staff and Arndt’s former teachers would have revealed that,
at no time, were they ever required to physically restrain her,”
Knappmiller wrote. “Such an exchange of information may have been
useful to the facility in devising an effective treatment plan.”
• The staff member that was
responsible for the training of all staff in proper restraint
techniques, Tim McIntyre, had, himself, never actually received any
appropriate training. Rather, the methods that McIntyre taught were
self-devised and substandard, including his use of the
face-down-on-the-floor-hold used on Arndt during the incident.
Hanrahan included a parenthetical
statement regarding that hold: “However, available evidence suggests
that, as inappropriate as the restraint methods taught by McIntyre
were, had this particular method been faithfully executed in
accordance with his instructions, it is plausible that Arndt may not
have died as a result of the restraint.”
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