The Misery Machine - Kids for Cash: The Tragic Death of Cornelius Fredrick

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Drewby and Yergy are taking an extended stay in Michigan this week to discuss the the tragic case of Cornelius Fredrick, a 16 year old boy that was murdered under the care of Lakeside, a facility for at-risk youth in Kalamazoo, while being restrained by 7 grown men. The offense that warranted the restraint that ended Cornelius's life? Playfully throwing a sandwich at another resident during lunch.  Levi's Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/6b9e4f07 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/brief-life-cornelius-frederick-warning-signs-missed-teen-s-fatal-n1234660 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6954332-Cornelius-Fredericks-v-Lakeside-Sequel-Civil.html https://www.michiganradio.org/families-community/2021-04-30/one-year-later-whats-changed-and-what-hasnt-since-the-killing-of-cornelius-fredrick https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/us/michigan-teen-death-staff-arraigned/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/25/us/teen-restraint-death-staff-charged-michigan-trnd/index.html https://youtu.be/AeFudo0jdt0 https://www.facebook.com/Justice-for-Cornelius-Fredericks-102035498262813/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/2356833151108362/?ref=share https://youtu.be/GHtxLMoNQgc https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010719875251  

When he was just a child, Cornelius Frederick's mother, Dikea Gosha, died in her sleep of heart failure on September 27, 2013, at just 32 years old. Even more tragic, Cornelius was the one who found her. He was placed in the care of his father who lost custody of Cornelius after he was incarcerated. At the age of 12, although some reports say 13, and separated from his six siblings, and again, some reports claim three, Cornelius landed at Wolverine Human Services, which is a youth facility in Detroit. Cornelius, or Corn, as most people called him, was an avid chess player who also loved to show off card tricks. It was his dream to become a counselor. Cornelius wanted to be liked, even if it meant getting in trouble. On occasion, he would steal a staff member's cell phone so fellow residents

could get on social media. Cornelius was described by staff as a Sour Patch kid. You was a kid that had a really tough exterior that could be a little frightening, but he had a really soft heart. Cornelius was known by his family members as a boy's boy. He was rambunctious with a penchant for playing jokes and pranks. At the age of 16, Cornelius arrived at Lakeside, which is a facility for at-risk youth in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which housed up to 12 to 18. It opened as an orphanage in 1907 and sequel youth and family services, an Alabama-based for-profit company, took over the operations in 2006 when the nonprofit facility fell into financial trouble. Lakeside was the third facility Cornelius had been placed in since the death of his mother.

Now, I'm not sure what you, the listener, believes the standards of facilities like this are, but we're about to post a video that may be disturbing for some people, And that is Cornelius' death. During lunch on April 29th, 2020, Cornelius Frederick threw a sandwich at another boy in the Lakeside Academy cafeteria. A staff member responded by tackling Cornelius to the ground, and then for 12 minutes, as Cornelius struggled, screamed, I can't breathe, and then gradually grew still. And as you can see, these are adult men, some of them clearly heavy set, restraining a teenager. Seven men who work for Lakeside held him down, some putting their weight on his legs and torso. Lakeside staff members told state investigators that they needed to put Cornelius in a restraint to prevent things from escalating. One employee said that Cornelius's food throwing could have turned into a riot. When the staff members let Cornelius go, his body was limp. Several employees said they thought he was faking, but some also noticed foam at his mouth, one of which was Heather

McLeogan, a nurse who could not be bothered to help the teenager. Twelve minutes later at 1.11 p.m., staff finally called 911. Cornelius died at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo two days later. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, the result of Cornelius being asphyxiated. It was also shown in his autopsy that Cornelius had COVID-19. And from what we understand from a former staff member is that many residents there also had the virus and weren't wearing masks and weren't being treated or separated. It was just spreading around the facility. There are claims that some of these staffers were taking pictures of his unconscious body with their cell phone.

Also, it is alleged that the cafeteria cleared out at this point. some 30 kids ran away from this restraint that was going on, which I would think is more riot-inducing that anything Cornelius could have done. It is further alleged that as kids tried to run out of the cafeteria, they were being tear-gast. Now, I don't know the legitimacy of that. I've seen that come up a couple times, and I don't know what security is access to there. I have a hard time believing that they would have access to tear gas, but I should mention that it is alleged. So it was also alleged that Cornelius suffered from asthma. He had wheezing problems, sleep apnea.

So I'm not sure why they would think it would be a good idea to just lay on his chest like that. Even if they're going to do a restraint from my understanding talking to direct support professionals that work in situations like, these. Granted, they don't work with foster care or residential in this type of way, but a restraint being done on a teenager with medical conditions such as that, you have to be very careful in the way you execute the hold. We were watching on a vice documentary regarding things of this nature that many states have strict laws and standards on restraints and holding someone down or restraining somebody for 12 minutes, 15 minutes is widely considered to be an improper restraint. So Cornelius's death resulted in criminal charges against three Lakeside employees,

47-year-old Michael Mosley, 28-year-old Zachary Solis, and 48-year-old Heather McLeogan, who was the nurse who rendered no aid for Cornelius. The three were charged with involuntary manslaughter, a felony punishable by a maximum of 15 years in prison. Mosley and Solis also faced two counts of second-degree child abuse, each count punishable for up to 10 years in prison. McLeogan faced one such charge, and all three were released on a $500,000 bond. A lawsuit was also filed by Cornelius's estate against Lakeside, and new emergency rules for youth facilities were implemented by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Lakeside was effectively closed of June.

that same year. In the two and a half years before Cornelius died, 56 violations at Lakeside were substantiated by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. They ranged from botched paperwork and facility management's failing to check whether employees were on a state registry of child abusers to improper restraints and staff members being overly aggressive with youth. So it should be noted that there are places out there that will hire people off the street with no ed tech certifications, no prior training, maybe they'll provide you with training, but you have to pass the background check and you can't be on a child registry like that. You would think that is the ultimate no-brainer to not hire somebody who's on the registry, but they couldn't even be

bothered to keep those types of offenders out of the system. I have to be careful because there's some banned YouTube words in here, but Lakeside was known, there's clear documentation pointed out in the vice documentary that they were taking kids who were convicted of assaulting girls in a manner that would put an adult on the registry and matching them up with kids who were abused in that way and they were unsupervised. This is not just incompetent. This is downright evil. Emergency services were called to Lakeside 237 times in the 18 months before Cornelius's death, including 12 times for reports of assault, eight times for sexual assault allegations, and four times for possible child abuse. Nine days before the fatal

restraint of Cornelius, another boy ran away from the facility and pled with police not to take him back because he feared for his safety. Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services acknowledged shortcomings in its oversight of Lakeside and sequel youth and family services, saying the state needs to do a better job of protecting the children in its care. Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered the department to ensure that SQL Youth and Family Services no longer did business with child care facilities in the state. Sequel Youth and Family Services serves 10,000 children annually across 21 states, including foster children and children with complex behavioral and mental health needs,

reporting more than $20 million in revenue. In 2019, an investigation at another sequel, run facility in Iowa uncovered staff members and properly used restraints resulting in injuries such as loss of consciousness and broken bones. The company pledged to adopt a behavior management program that would minimize the use of restraints on children at its facilities. In the aftermath of Cornelius's death, many boys ran away from Lakeside. As of September 2020, 8 were still missing. At least one of the residents who was there on April 29th is now dead. Daimar Bowden was killed in Columbus, Ohio, after being sent home when Lakeside closed.

So black children like Cornelius are 35% more likely than white youths to be placed in group homes or residential treatment facilities. Nationwide, 33% of children in foster care are black, but black children just make up 15% of U.S. children. And it was in fury and watching the documentaries on this because, you know, as these kids, kids get older into teenage years, nobody wants to adopt them, even more so if they are black children. And there was interviews with some staff members. And one of them said he could think of at least eight instances where they transferred a teen upon turning 18, thereby phasing out of the foster care system and transferring them directly to a homeless shelter. Some of these teens, when interviewed, talked about this place as if it was a prison.

And a lot of times it is because not only are you having children that are going in for, you know, foster care reasons, like they're an orphan. Families died. Nobody can take care of them. Or they're just being taken away for a period of time due to incarceration of family members or whatnot with children who have very complex mental health issues, also with children that are serving time. Some kids are there in lieu of serving at Juvenile Hall. The types of kids you're mixing together, it can be bound for,

fireworks. Like one team that was being interviewed talked about how if somebody ran up to him, he had to be prepared to fight because that's usually what was happening. You would feel scared for your life there. Like children are sent there for truancy and then come out worse than they were when they went in. Some teens that have to stay there get into the good graces of the facility and they're basically in lack of a better term. almost made deputies by the resident workers, and they're allowed to do restraints on other teens there, which is, I would assume, completely illegal.

So one thing that I saw in the documentary, which I found really, really disturbing, was the fact that a lot of these facilities are for profit. The person that founded many of them, especially the ones in the Midwest, was the same guy that founded Jiffy Loeb, and really just cared about the profits. He marketed it as a place where at-risk youth,

no matter what their situation was, could go there to become, he called him like tax eaters, become taxpayers, or it was some strange thing. He wanted to prepare them for the world, but really he was just lining his pockets. So for example,

they'd have some child that, you know, couldn't get put into a home, was probably violent, no facility would take them, and he would take them and charge these crazy fees in order to do that and would try to like get a lot of kids like that. While you had kids there that actually

had some plans and they had been working with them for months and months and months, and they would phase them out early. More and more nowadays, awareness is being raised about the existence of for-profit prisons, and it's become a bipartisan issue to stop the practice of these. But if for-profit prisons exist for adults, then it should come as no surprise that this is being done for children as well. And this is something that I don't believe there's a lot of awareness being raised around it. A lot of these kids are invisible. I had never heard of most of this until researching this case. Yeah, we had a school like this in Maine that I eventually wanted you a case on one day. It was called the Elon School. It's just a couple miles down the road. And they did some horrific things and it

eventually closed not really that long ago. Within the past 20 years, I believe. Yeah. And a lot of things like this are getting more well-known now because celebrities are coming out about their own experiences being sent away to like reform schools, boarding schools for troubled youths. Paris Hilton is one. Right. Right. Right. Right.

I believe that most of you probably have heard of her speaking out against this. Yeah. These reform camps. We had a listener who was possibly being sent to one and we haven't heard from her in a while. It's been months. So Anna, if you're listening, please let Drewby and Yergy know that you're okay. In speaking with some ed techs,

I've learned that Maine has some very strict rules as far as education, a support professional needs, as well as restraints. There's very, very strict laws on this. So because of that, when Vice was researching all of these violations done by sequel care facilities around the country,

Maine's, I believe, was tied for the lowest with Iowa. I had forgotten until that point that there are sequel care facilities in Maine. I believe there's one in Yarmouth, one in Bangor, and I believe one down in the mid-coast, and I have never heard anything bad happening at these places. I knew somebody that worked doing records for the one in Yarmouth, and not once have I ever heard anything bad coming out of there. And I would assume that the regulations probably played a factor in that compared to, say, Michigan, where there weren't as strict regulations by comparison. Also, when hiring somebody off the streets, which we do have places here that will hire people off the streets, but depending on the age of the children you're working with, as well as the severity of, say, their developmental disabilities or aggressive.

You need to have these course trainings that altogether, depending on the demographic you're working with, could be over 100 hours of training. And even further, many of these require college credits. I believe it was 90 college credits was what I was quoted to work with certain kids. So these are much different standards that our state has compared to other places in the country. One person I was talking to stated that when they do restraints, they do not put someone face down. So we're watching interviews with former workers from Lakeside, and they were demonstrating on a vice reporter. What they did was they started by, I know this hold from wrestling. It's called chicken winging. It's basically you hook someone's arms behind their back, not quite in a hammerlock position, but I can put up a picture.

of somebody doing something similar, and then they would drive their knee into the back of the person's knee to take them down, which this seems rough and awfully archaic. I can say that I know from some folks. I do believe that the person that you know worked at the same facility as some of my friends, and I don't know if things have changed.

I imagine they probably have, because this was upwards to almost 20 years ago, the method of restraint that they did was a lot like that, because they showed me how to do it. They did it on me. It was what I described. Yes.

My aunt also works there and showed me something similar. So I think like from different time periods, I'm sure some things have evolved. And I think it probably depends on like what type of residence you might be working with. And from facility facility. When they were showing the takedown advice, two people taking down the reporter. So they had one person in the chicken wing position like I described. And they had somebody else grabbed their ankles. And they almost slammed her down.

down like on her bat without even guiding her to the ground, kind of just let her fall. And then what they would do was they pulled her arms above her head so that way her arms are furthest from her torso because you have less strength of your arms the further their extent from your body compared to when they're closed into your torso, you can generate the most force from a press. So they would hold her arms together, wrist down above her head, and the other person would pin the ankles. I can see for a temporary restraint, this probably is acceptable.

but, you know, when you start putting your knee on someone's chest or sitting on someone's chest, which was alleged that they were doing to people, having people who weigh over 250 pounds sitting on a teenager's chest, I... There's reports that his head, Cornelius's head, was smacking against the hard cafeteria floor. Now, think about that for a little bit during this 12 minutes for a period of time. He's trying to get away because he can't breathe. And you have all these heavy men crushing you. One interview with a resident there talked about how whenever he was restrained, yeah, he would freak out and try to get away.

Like the last thing he wanted was a big man like this to be laying on top of him. And he was covered in bruises all of the time. So I can't really speak for other states. It seems like in Maine we have things pretty well under control in most areas. I know when I talked to my stepmother, I messaged her right before we started recording. She said that you were only allowed to use restraints with children in very rare circumstances, and it had to be a really big thing. But they were never allowed to do it with adults. So what I was told, and the person I talked to primarily works with teenagers, restraint is a last resort.

If you are, say, punching your leg, you're not restrained. You are redirected. But if you are, I don't know, trying to slam your head against a wall or you're trying to attack somebody, else, then the restraint is done. This person I talked to said that based on her experience, and she's worked in the industry for, I'd say, well over 10 years at this point, she had never met a single person that seemed to enjoy doing restraints. So the idea of these people at Lakeside being so happy to restrain people as if some power trip is just absolutely disgusting. Well, I mean, I don't want to talk a whole bunch of trash about Michigan. I'm

That's not what I'm doing here. But after we did, you know, our last case with Michelle Blair, just the whole level of what they accept to be child abuse and child neglect, this doesn't surprise me. It's quite possible that Michigan has a long way to go. Now, since both of us have never been to Michigan, if you are from Michigan and you have information that you could help shine a light on this for us, we would love to hear from you. You can leave a comment below. You could leave suggestions below.

that way we can get a better picture with what's going on with Michigan in regards to cases such as these. So what becomes of Pornelius's death? Well, as of right now, Michael Mosley, Zachary Solis, and Heather McLeogan are out on bond and are still awaiting trial. What will happen in court is up to the trial at this point, but they only face a maximum of 10 to 15 years in prison depending, and that's if they even get the maximum for killing court. Cornelius. And Cornelius was buried by the state in an unmarked grave. Yes. From what we understand, those who cared about Cornelius were able to crowdfund his gravestone, and that should be soon installed. The best way to support this channel so we can keep bringing lesser known cases like this to you is to hit like and subscribe, watch this video to the end, and share this with people that you believe would appreciate it. I also want to welcome some new patrons that are going that extra step to support us on

Patreon welcome Mona, Joy, Amber, Karen, as well as Chaka, our now third highest tier, Patreon Patreon, along with Levi and Cammy. There's their lovely pictures right now. And if you two want to support us on Patreon, patreon.com slash the misery machine. You get access to all of our secret episodes. You get access to our secret discord and Snapchat groups and you may even get a postcard. A haunted one. Patreon.com slash the misery machine. Also, thank you to everybody that reached out about Kiten. Kighton is doing well. He's very snugly. Nothing negative to report as of yet, but he is getting as much love in all the cares we possibly can get. So thank you everyone for the well wishes and the suggestions with Keitin's care.

They mean the world to us. But until next week, we love you. We love you. Bye.