Manslaughter charges filed against staff after student dies

SACRAMENTO — El Dorado County prosecutors have formally filed involuntary manslaughter charges against administrators and a teacher at the El Dorado Hills non-public school where an autistic student died after being restrained face down for hours by staffers, El Dorado County District Attorney’s officials said Tuesday.

Three staffers at troubled Guiding Hands School – school site administrator Cindy Keller, Guiding Hands principal Staranne Meyers and Kimberly Wohlwend, the teacher accused of being among those who restrained 13-year-old Max Benson – will be arraigned Wednesday in El Dorado Superior Court in Placerville. A separate civil lawsuit filed against Guiding Hands also alleges Wohlwend restrained Benson with the help of other teachers.

District Attorney’s officials on Tuesday said attorneys for the three were cooperating with prosecutors and that Keller, Meyers and Wohlwend will appear at the afternoon hearing.

Meyers, Keller and Wohlwend were also named in a civil suit filed Nov. 7 against the school and several employees. The suit also names Davis Joint Unified, Elk Grove Unified and Amador County Unified school districts – districts that had contracted with Guided Hands for education services – along with California Department of Education

and special education administrative bodies in Yolo and Amador counties.

The civil suit filed on behalf of Benson’s family and other families of Guiding Hands students alleges Wohlwend held Max’s upper body while other staff members Jill Watson, Betty Morgan and Le’Mon Thomas took turns holding Max’s legs down.

The suit states that the staff “imposed a prolonged prone restraint on Max and failed to render competent medical aid to Max.”

Max was restrained face down for one hour and 45 minutes. The state Department of Education said in 2018 the school staff used “an amount of force which is not reasonable and necessary under the circumstances.”