The counselor faces up to five years in prison after snapping photos as a teen dangled from a belt at a care center.
By Associated Press
Published March 19, 2004
FORT LAUDERDALE - A jury on Wednesday convicted a youth care worker of child neglect for letting a 15-year-old boy hang from a belt looped around his neck at a shelter for troubled teens as she took pictures of him during the suicide attempt.
Anthony Dumas was still breathing as Sandra Trotter, 41, snapped the Polaroid photos.
Dumas lapsed into a coma after the June 2000 incident at the Lippman Family Center and died four months later.
Trotter, who was a counselor at the center, faces a sentence ranging from probation to five years in prison.
She will be sentenced March 27.
Two other employees were suspended over the incident.
Lutheran Services Florida, a Tampa-based nonprofit organization, runs the 20-bed center under a contract with the state Department of Juvenile Justice.
Assistant State Attorney Dennis Siegel told jurors Trotter could have tried to get the 110-pound boy down by lifting him up a foot to place him on a bunk and relieve the pressure on his neck.
"Four pictures of a hanging, unconscious child - she was able to do that, but she didn't lift that child one foot up," he said.
Siegel said Trotter gave varying excuses to justify her actions.
Trotter testified Wednesday that her supervisor ordered her not to touch the boy, but that she did try to loosen the belt.
She said she took the photos to show the position of the boy's body "for Lippman or whatever purpose they could be used for."
A judge had ordered Dumas into the center 19 days earlier, after he was arrested for shoving his mother.
State records indicate he told a counselor within hours of his arrival that he planned to hang himself.
"Justice was served," Dumas' mother, Shirley Finley, said. " ... I think it's been the hardest thing a parent can go through."
The family has a lawsuit pending against the Department of Juvenile Justice.
Finley reached a confidential, out-of-court settlement with Lutheran Services.
