Mom questions son’s assignment
to work camp
By Grant Boxleitner
gboxleitner@news-press.com
Originally posted on August 08, 2006
Cape Coral resident Dawn O’Keefe said she didn’t know why state
juvenile officials assigned her son to a work program instead of a
detention facility.
A Collier County sheriff’s deputy captured her son, James Danley,
16, and Mike Pryor, 15, of Fort Myers late Monday in Everglades
City, a day after they escaped from the Big Cypress Wilderness
Institute 12 miles away at 2595 Turner River Road in Ochopee.
Danley, 16, of Cape Coral faces 34 burglary, theft, criminal
mischief and fraud charges between March and June, according to Lee
County jail records. Collier County sheriff’s officials said Danley
was charged with aggravated battery, but the Lee sheriff’s Web site
has no record of it, and O’Keefe said he was never arrested on that
charge.
Nevertheless, the wilderness institute, she said, was not a good fit
for her son.
“My son is a runaway, and he should have been in a secure facility,”
O’Keefe said. “I knew this would happen. I don’t think (Department
of Juvenile Justice officials) punish the kids properly.”
The Department of Juvenile Justice’s Mary M. Johnson, the program
monitor for the wilderness institute, could not be reached for
comment.
Deputies had gotten tips about the two escaped suspects being seen
around Everglades City late Monday afternoon.
A plainclothes Collier deputy later spotted the two. He told the
pair he was lost and asked them if they were from around Everglades
City. They said they weren't and said they were from Cape Coral. The
deputy was able to identify the pair and placed them under arrest,
sheriff’s officials said.
They didn't try to run from the deputy. They were healthy but a bit
tired from their overnight run through the woods, deputies said.
“My son was not taking (the program) seriously,” O’Keefe said.
“He’ll probably be going to secure detention.”
Danley was kicked out of Ida S. Baker High School in January for
missing too many days, his mother said. He would have been repeating
10th grade beginning today.
Instead, Danley has a scheduled court hearing this morning in
Naples.
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