Charges Dropped Against Five Bowling Brook Staffers (Correction)

Charges against five former counselors at Bowling Brook Preporatory School were dropped by the Carroll County prosecutor Wednesday, according to a Baltimore Sun article.

Prosecutors said that the detective in the case, Carroll County Sheriff's deputy Douglas Epperson, is unable to testify because he is the subject of a perjury investigation related to .

The Baltimore sun article reports that several other witnesses for the state, students who were at Bowling Brook when the death occurred, are also no longer viable witnesses.

An article on NAACP.org reports that Isiah Simmons III, 17, lost consciousness and died Jan. 23, 2007 after struggling with five adult staff of the Bowling Brook Prepatory School, a privately run residential program that was under contract with the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services.

Witnesses said the staffers sat on Simmons’ limbs, chest and head, subsequently restraining him for three hours. Staffers did not call emergency medical services for more than 40 minutes once Simmons was determined unresponsive. The state medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, according to the NAACP.org article.

After a grand jury decided against indicting the staffers for manslaughter and other offenses, they were subsequently charged with reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor, according to the NAACP.

The Sheriff's office issued a statement that did not respond directly to the dismissal of the charges but said an independent investigation is under way.

The Office of the Maryland State Prosecutor is conducting an independent investigation into allegations of perjury by a Sheriff's office investigator and senior staff member in an unrelated case, according to a Sheriff's news release. The accused employees have been reassigned to administrative responsibilities pending the outcome of that investigation.

The five men facing charges in the Bowling Brook case were Jason Willie Robinson of Westminster, Mark Richard Sainato of Keymar, Brian Gerard Kanavy of Mechanicsburg, PA, Dennis Harding of Baltimore and Shadi Sabbagh of Keymar, according to the Baltimore Sun.

This article was updated at 11 p.m. to include information from the Carroll County Sheriff's Department. A correction was made at 1 p.m. Thursday as the original article headline said murder charges had been dropped. The five staffers were not charged with murder.