One employee from the social-service agency MultiEthnic Behavioral Health has plead guilty to charges of fraud and obstructing justice, and two other employees are set to do the same very soon in the wake of a 14-year-old girl's death, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The guilty pleas come as part of an agreement where all three will testify against the agency, which tried to cover up the death in 2006. The organization had been paid upward of $3.7 million by the city to take care of patients like Danieal Kelly.
Christina Nimpson, Manuelita Buenaflor and Sotheary Chan all worked for MultiEthnic Behavioral Health when Kelly, a cerebral palsy patient, died of starvation in a hot apartment in Philadelphia while under the care of the agency. While none of the three employees were specifically assigned to take care of Kelly, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, all three participated in covering up various failures on the agency's part. Buenaflor, for example, a supervisor, created documentation of visits that never occurred, erased documentation of lack of oversight and backdated various records. Nimpson, according to her plea agreement, "frequently did not make the required visits to the families assigned to her."
The girl's mother, Andrea Kelly, was also charged in her daughter's death. She pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in April, and was sentenced to between 20 and 40 years in prison. Case worker Julius Juma Murray and MultiEthnic head Mickal Kamuvaka also face involuntary manslaughter charges in the case.
For more on Danieal Kelly's case:
- read this Philadelphia Inquirer article