Girl seriously injured at weight-loss camp
Accident came a day before site in Kent was closed
KENT — An 8-year-old attending a weight-loss camp in Kent sustained serious head injuries just a day prior to the camp owner notifying parents they needed to shut down and that children should be picked up or sent home.
The camp, which officially closed Tuesday, is being investigated by the state’s Office of Early Childhood and Department of Children and Families, the departments said in a joint statement last week. It is unknown whether the investigation is tied to the injury, and the owner has stated the camp was shut down following a lack of staff, not the incident.
Julia and James Guarrera said they were planning last weekend to pick their daughter, Katarina, up from Camp Shane, which was held at the South Kent School, after she called telling them she was unhappy with the camp. Before they left their New Jersey home, however, the couple received what James Guarrera described as a “horrific” phone call.
A counselor at the camp contacted the Guarreras, letting them know their daughter had been injured and asked if she should be taken to the hospital, James Guarrera said. Guarrera, a surgeon at Rutgers Health, asked them to send him a photo of Katarina’s face.
“The injury looked like somebody who’d been hit with a pipe,” said James Guarrera, who is a transplant surgeon and has experience with trauma surgery. “I could tell she had a nasal fracture just by looking at the picture.”
They later found out that Katarina had sustained a skull and orbital fracture, a nose fracture and a concussion while playing soccer on a tennis court. The injury resulted in a three-day stay at both Danbury Hospital and New York City’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital’s pediatric critical care unit, according to medical records provided by the family. Her head injuries also resulted in pneumocephalus, or air in the skull, as a result of the fractures.
David Ettenberg, who owns the camp, said in an interview Thursday that he closed the camp strictly because he didn’t have enough staff. After some counselors left, he said he was unable to find replacements because of widespread personnel shortages.
In response to further requests for comment including about the injury sustained prior to closing, Ettenberg sent an email attachment Friday linked to an insurance company’s camp newsletter titled, “Counselor Crisis in a PostCovid Summer” and did not comment further. An email sent to parents on Sunday, June 11, obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media, notified parents they had to pick up their campers by July 13 or coordinate flights home, as many campers were from different parts of the country.
“We were optimistic that we could run a terrific and safe camp this season after having been closed down by the pandemic,” the email stated. “However, we — like the rest of the country — are finding that staffing is a crisis. We started the season in good shape staffingwise but, as is common, we lost a few staff — some because they weren’t happy to stay quarantined as required — and now we cannot replace them. We simply cannot find sufficient staff to continue.”
A Department of Early Childhood spokeswoman said Friday there was no new information into the investigation to report and declined further comment citing a pending investigation involving minors. Records maintained on 211childcare.org — a website for information on child care administered by the United Way and “supported by the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood” — say officials determined one violation of Office of Early Childhood policy was found July 2 as part of an investigation.
Records from 211childcare.org also show inspections and investigations from 2019 from when the camp was located at The Rectory School in Pomfret. Those reports included the finding of 34 violations during an unannounced inspection by the Office of Early Childhood on July 2, 2019, five violations on July 25, 2019, 14 violations on a July 31, inspection, and nine violations following a Nov. 6, 2019 inspection. A corrective action plan for the various violations was then put into place to resolve the concerns.
Ettenberg said Thursday the camp was located in New York for 52 years and upon moving to Connecticut and getting inspected, Camp Shane ran into issues with state regulation differences.
“Basically we had to start from the beginning with all the regulations,” he said. “We didn’t know anything, so they told us, ‘You need this, you need that.’ We worked on that.”
Incident report
The camp incident report from 11 a.m. on July 10, provided to Hearst Connecticut Media by the Guarrera family, stated that one of the counselors “was observing the kids playing and heard a clang.” When that person looked back, the soccer goal net was on top of Katarina, the report stated.
The report also notes that in addition to the Guarreras, the camp called the Kent Volunteer Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services. The ambulance’s presence has been confirmed by at least two other parents who picked their kids up that day, but emergency service officials did not respond to a request for comment.
The counselor who contacted the Guarreras, Giuliana Giasi, said she was told to tell the parents the net had caused the injury. James Guarrera, however, said the details of the incident were initially unclear before he got the full account.
“They were playing soccer with a volleyball on a tennis court with a hockey net,” James Guarrera said was the ultimate outcome of what was happening.
Giasi said she had a scheduled break at the time of the incident, and three other male counselors were watching a mixed group of the youngest boys and girls at the camp.
But the camp was missing staff and those still working had their hands full.
“It was a thing that could happen in five seconds,” Giasi said. “The youngest kids were a lot to handle for the amount of people we
had.”
Giasi said she returned when she got a call about the injury and used first aid supplies — an ice pack and “sponges” — to do what she could while they called the Guarreras and waited for the ambulance.
“It was just us making sure that she was okay to the best of our abilities, no matter what,” she said.
Counselors and oversight
In the time it was open this summer, Giasi said she estimates about 10 counselors left, with just two replacements added. The nutritionist and the fitness instructor left within a few days, she said, a comment several parents also made in speaking about the camp’s staffing levels.
Only eight counselors remained when camp closed, she said.
Giasi and the Guarreras confirmed that another counselor traveled in the ambulance with Katarina. The whole time, the Guarreras were staying in contact with the personnel taking care of their daughter.
James Guarrera said Katarina became unresponsive en route to the nearest hospital, and they were told she was being re-routed to a
trauma center in Danbury.
“I was petrified and it really takes a lot to get me nervous, but it was sheer terror,” James Guarrera said. “No parent should ever have to go through that.”
After being moved to the New York City hospital, Katarina was discharged Monday, but developed a fever and lethargy again on Thursday, her father said.
Megan Thompson was also picking up her 16-yearold son Paddy on July 10 – the day Katarina was injured. Thompson drove from Massachusetts after her son told her other campers and counselors were leaving. She also said she had been disappointed after hearing about the offered camp activities.
Paddy was supposed to attend the camp for six weeks, but stayed for just over two.
When she arrived around 11 a.m., Thompson said a man— whom her son later told her was a counselor— was running around with no shirt on and a phone to his ear. The counselor asked Thompson if she “was with the ambulance.”
“He was obviously frantic,” Thompson said. “It was very concerning to me.”