Bucks caregiver faces criminal neglect charges in autistic man's heat death

"Everyone was out of the van."

Time and again, when Bucks County investigators asked how a helpless, autistic man had been left to die last month in a sweltering, parked vehicle, that had been his caregiver's response, court records say.

She was wrong - criminally so, police have now concluded.

On Tuesday, authorities charged that caregiver, Stacey Strauss of Philadelphia, with fatally neglecting Bryan Nevins, a 20-year-old client at Woods Services, a Langhorne care facility.

Nevins' body was found July 24 in a van she had parked outside Woods Services, where he had been left behind on a 97-degree afternoon.

Severely autistic, Nevins was so childlike that he was never supposed to be out of his caregiver's view, court records say. Yet he was left in the van for five hours after returning from an excursion to Sesame Place.

"Mr. Nevins' death was not simply a tragic accident," said a statement issued by Bucks County District Attorney David W. Heckler and Middletown Township's acting public safety director, Patrick McGinty. "Rather, his death resulted from the criminal failure of the defendant to discharge her assigned responsibilities to Mr. Nevins."

Strauss, 40, was charged with neglect of a care-dependent person - a first-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. She also was charged with misdemeanor counts of involuntary manslaughter and recklessly endangering another person.

Strauss turned herself in Tuesday to Middletown police. She was arraigned before District Judge Daniel Baranoski, who set her bail at $50,000.

Her attorney, Gregory Pagano of Philadelphia, said the death was precisely what authorities claimed it was not: "a tragic mistake," although he could not explain how Nevins was left in the van. Strauss, currently under suspension, was an eight-year Woods Services employee who had a previously spotless record, he said.

Strauss "is extremely distraught and remorseful. Her heart goes out to [Nevins'] family," Pagano said. "We are disappointed that the District Attorney's Office decided to charge her here."

Nevins and a twin brother, also autistic, had lived for years at the facility, which provides education, therapy, and health-care support for exceptional-needs clients.

Their parents, Diane and William Nevins of Oceanside, N.Y., removed their other son after Bryan's death.

"Now we'll see what a disabled child's life is worth in Bucks County," William Nevins, a former homicide chief for the New York City police, said in a phone interview. "We'll see by how the prosecution goes and how the sentencing guidelines are kept."

In fact, prosecutors raised the stakes by charging Strauss under a relatively recent felony statute that tends to be used sparingly - mostly in cases of institutional abuse of the elderly - and can be difficult to prove.

The law, passed in 1995, makes it a felony for a caregiver to seriously harm a care-dependent adult by failing to provide for his or her health, safety, or welfare.

"I think there's a good argument that this is the right charge," said Temple University sociology professor Ronald Costen, a former deputy attorney general who drafted the law. "You've got to show that this man's condition was such that he was not able to protect himself, that [Strauss] was aware of that, and that through ignoring that she brought about his death."

The last prominent use of the law in Bucks County came in 2003, when a night attendant in a Yardley care facility was convicted of third-degree murder and felony neglect in the fatal stomping of an Alzheimer's patient. Three others - including the facility's administrator and head nurse - pleaded guilty to misdemeanor neglect charges.

Nevins' death came a year after a toddler died in nearby Penndel after being left in a van all day by the owner of the day-care he attended. In March, a Bucks County jury acquitted Rimma Shvartsman of involuntary manslaughter in the death of 2-year-old Daniel Slutsky, concluding that her mistake was not an intentional criminal act.

The neglect statute was not available to prosecutors in that case because it applies only to adult victims.

Woods Services spokeswoman Cheryl Kauffman said Strauss remained suspended as the organization's internal investigation continued.

According to a probable-cause affidavit, Strauss and another Woods residential counselor, Gerald Douglas, took Nevins and three other clients to Sesame Place about 10 a.m. on July 24.

Strauss, who drove, was in charge of Nevins and one other client, the affidavit says. While at the amusement park, Strauss called a Woods supervisor around 11 a.m. to report that Nevins had misbehaved by biting himself and trying to bite another client.

The supervisor, Michelle Bova, told police that she instructed Strauss to bring the group back to Woods Services.

Nevins' parents have said their son functioned at the level of a 2-year-old. A manager at Woods told police that Nevins, when off the facility's grounds, was supposed to be under "close reach" supervision - meaning close enough for a caregiver to touch him immediately if Nevins were in danger. On the site, he had to be constantly within sight of a staff member.

After stopping for lunch around noon at a Langhorne McDonald's, the 2008 red Kia Sedona minivan returned to Woods Services around 12:30 p.m.

Strauss later told police that she had pulled into a parking spot, that everyone got out, and that she had closed the van's sliding doors. She could not recall if she had locked it, the affidavit said.

Strauss denied that she had specifically been assigned to supervise Nevins on the excursion, police reported, but assured investigators that "everyone was out of the van" when she left it.

Asked whether she had checked the back of the van and the backseat, police said, Strauss repeated that "everybody was out of the van."

Asked whether she had seen everyone outside the vehicle, Strauss at first did not answer, the affidavit said. Then Strauss added that she had seen everyone outside of the van, but could not say exactly where she had seen Nevins standing.

Strauss said she had not walked Nevins back to his building, the affidavit said, and "did agree that she should have made sure that [Nevins] was taken back to his building."

In their joint statement, Heckler and McGinty said it was "undisputed" that Nevins "was not escorted from the van, nor was he returned to his residence by Ms. Strauss as was her responsibility."

"Instead, he was left in the van on one of the hottest days of this terribly hot summer."

Estimates of the temperature inside the van have been as high as 150 degrees. Authorities have said that Nevins probably died within an hour or less, unable to operate the van's interior door handles.

He was not found until around 5:30 p.m., after a nurse with his medications could not find him.

Counselor Gerald Douglas, who had accompanied Strauss to Sesame Place, told searchers, "I think she left him in the van," and ran to the vehicle.

Nevins lay on his back in the far rear seat, his arms drawn up to his chest, dead for hours.

His body, a medical examiner later concluded, had "literally been cooked."