The death of a 12-year-old boy at a controversial wilderness camp for troubled youth in North Carolina has been ruled a homicide, according to an autopsy report.
The early teen, identified in documents only as “CJH,” died in February from “asphyxiation due to suffocation” after becoming trapped inside a damaged bivy sack — a small enclosed tent — on his first night at Trails Carolina Camp, the state’s chief medical examiner ruled Monday.
It’s standard procedure for Trails Carolina campers to spend the first night in a small tent, but staff deviated from that policy after noticing that the interior mesh door of the dead camper’s bivvy was torn.
Instead, they used weatherproof doors to seal the opening and rigged an alarm that would sound if he tried to escape.
“He was placed in this unsafe sleeping area by others and did not have the ability to reasonably escape the situation with the alarm sealing the opening,” the coroner wrote, noting that bivy products often warn against completely sealing weather-tight openings because this can lead to “respiratory restriction.”
“We deviated from standard protocol by using a damaged bivy and fixing an exterior weatherproof door instead of an interior mesh panel.”
No charges have been announced since the news broke, but the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office has been conducting a criminal investigation since the death in February.
Trails Carolina has repeatedly maintained the death was an accident.
However, police claim the campground has not fully cooperated with the investigation and deliberately relocated campers to other locations to avoid contact with investigators.
The camp was closed in May after the Department of Health and Human Services deemed the facility “endangered.”[ed] “The health, safety and welfare of our customers”
According to the autopsy report, the 12-year-old boy, CJH, had a history of anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and migraines.
He had arrived at the so-called naturopathic program from New York less than 24 hours before his death, and counselors told investigators he had been “yelling and raging,” refused dinner and had a panic attack around midnight.
Counsellors examined CJH at 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. but were unable to actually see the boy because the bibby’s “outer opaque layer” was closed, the autopsy report said.
When the boy was discovered at 7:45 a.m. “cold to the touch and rigid,” his body had been rotated 180 degrees from the entrance and his feet were near the opening, “which may have caused the waterproof material to fall onto his head and face,” according to the report.
Trails Carolina did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment.
With post wire
