Criminal trial following death of 13-year-old Guiding Hands student Max Benson delayed
Nearly five years after 13-year-old Max Benson died at his El Dorado Hills school, a criminal trial over his death was postponed on Friday for a teacher and two school administrators facing involuntary manslaughter.
El Dorado Superior Court Judge Mark Ralphs delayed the trial after defense attorney Kelly Babineau vacated her position. Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Babineau to serve as a Nevada County judge to replace retiring Judge Thomas M. Anderson.
The defendants — school site administrator Cindy Keller, Guiding Hands School principal Starranne Meyers and teacher Kimberly Wohlwend — each face up to four years in prison if convicted.
Wohlwend is accused of being among those who restrained Max and put him in a prone restraint. The boy died at a hospital one day after the incident.
In vacating the original Feb. 28 trial date, Ralphs set the new date for March 3.
David Fisher, who subbed in for Babineau at Friday’s hearing, said he was unsure if he could review the case and agree to only a week’s delay.
“I understand the urgency,” Fisher told the court. “We need to move the case forward.”
The trial has had several delays since charges were filed the following year in part because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The school, which closed in the wake of Max’s death, and the women also face a separate civil lawsuit brought on behalf of the family, who are Davis residents.
According to prosecutors and the civil suit, Max was restrained face down for one hour and 45 minutes for allegedly spitting at a classmate, one of the behaviors he exhibited when not receiving adult support. The civil suit also claims Wohlwend placed Max in a prone restraint. The state Department of Education — which is also named in the civil suit along with Davis Joint Unified School District and other districts that sent students to Guiding Hands — said in 2018 the school’s staff used “an amount of force which is not reasonable and necessary under the circumstances.”
The civil suit states that the staff “imposed a prolonged prone restraint on Max and failed to render competent medical aid to Max,” and did not conduct CPR in a timely fashion. Paramedics weren’t called for nearly a half-hour after Max lost consciousness, the lawsuit alleges.
Several bills have been introduced in the Legislature in the aftermath of Max’s death.
In 2018, Newsom signed a bill that would allow teachers and staff to restrain and seclude students only when their behavior posed a clear threat or danger.
On Tuesday, Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, introduced a bill that would ban schools from putting students in a prone restraint,” which physically or mechanically restrains students in a face down position.” Prone restraint is often used on students with special needs. Max, who was autistic, was referenced in Cortese’s news release about the bill.
“Prone restraint is an outdated and barbaric form of discipline that has no place in our classrooms,” said Cortese, a member of the Senate Education Committee. “Instead of prone restraint, educators should respond to students that appear to pose a threat to themselves or others with positive behavioral interventions that keep all students safe.”
