Former detention officer David Elswick says his mistake enabled two juvenile inmates to fight, resulting in one's death.
By CURTIS KRUEGER
Published August 9, 2003
LARGO - An officer in training at Pinellas County's Juvenile Detention Center said he "accidentally unlocked" the cell doors of two youths in May, allowing them to meet for a deadly fight.
Detention Officer David Elswick, who has since resigned, told Pinellas sheriff's investigators he unlocked rooms 14 and 16 by pressing buttons on an electronic control panel, according to a sheriff's report released this week. Afterward, 16-year-old Louis Lauro came out of his cell, approached the cell of fellow inmate Danny Matthews, and hit him.
Matthews, 17, fell and went unconscious after what most witnesses said was two punches from Lauro. Matthews was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Elswick did not explain exactly what caused him to open the two doors accidentally, but he "stated that it was "common' for officers to hit the wrong button which would unlock the wrong door," according to the sheriff's report.
Since the May 31 fight, detention center officers have stopped using the electronic control panel to let youths out of their cells. Now, officers must walk to individual doors and unlock them with keys, said Catherine Arnold, spokeswoman for the state Department of Juvenile Justice.
This week the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's office decided not to charge Lauro with a crime, because he and Matthews had threatened each other all day, and had essentially agreed to fight each other. Prosecutors considered it a case of "mutual combat," with each party equally responsible.
The sheriff's report on the closed investigation, released at the request of the St. Petersburg Times, raises questions about inmate supervision at the detention center, a jail for youths that is operated by the state Department of Juvenile Justice.
Elswick could not be reached for comment Friday. His mistaken opening of the cell doors after the 8 p.m. lockdown released Lauro and Matthews into a hallway, where they began their brief and fatal fight.
Elswick told investigators no one told him to open rooms 14 and 16, and he did not further explain how such an accident would have occurred.
But some of the more than two dozen inmates interviewed for the report raised the possibility it might have been more than a random accident. Some youths said a fellow inmate had called out and asked for rooms 14 and 16 to be opened. Others said inmates had been plotting to push buttons on the control panel themselves, when officers weren't looking, to release the two youths apparently primed for a fight.
Told about the report, Gregory Perenich, attorney for the Matthews family, said "it seems very curious that these particular cell doors are opened when these are the two young men that are bantering back and forth."
Lauro himself said in a taped statement he was surprised when his door "popped" - opened partway after the officer pushed an electronic button. He said he had not been trying to get out. But he did say he had earlier heard about a plan by other inmates to get the cell doors open.
Lauro said Matthews "was talking trash, and I heard them talking about how they're going to get the doors popped open."
He said another inmate "was telling them to have room 14 and 16 doors popped open."
No one quoted in the report - inmates or officers - suggested that JDC staff opened the cell doors intentionally.
Arnold, of the Department of Juvenile Justice, denied that the episode pointed to a lack of proper training at the JDC, which is in the Largo area and houses about 120 youths, most of them awaiting court dates on juvenile charges. She said a recent review rated training procedures at 93 out of 100, which she said was "exceptional."
She said Elswick, who was being paid a $22,809 annual salary, resigned in June after narrowly failing a state certification test. He had worked for the agency since October of 2002.
The rancor between Lauro and Matthews had been building for at least a day, with each reportedly threatening to fight the other. But the two barely knew each other; Lauro didn't even know Matthews' name.
Lauro had been lying on his bunk in his underwear at the time his cell door popped open. When it opened, he thought of the rumors that someone was going to try to get the doors opened, and "I wasn't going to let them come to my room and go into my room or do something," he told investigators.
He wrapped a sheet around himself and walked into the hallway to Matthews' cell. Matthews also came out of his cell, with a sheet draped around him. Matthews had a roommate in his cell who was not involved in the fight.
Lauro said Matthews "scratched me or something and that's when I hit him," the report said.
As Detectives Misty Manning and Kurt Romanosky talked to Lauro on June 1, the day after the fight, Lauro needed to know something: "If you can answer one question, is the kid all right?'
"No," Manning said.
"Is he alive?"
"No."
Later, Lauro said, "I'm sorry for what I did. . . . I didn't want to hurt the kid."
