Foster child death linked to state-contracted home prompts criminal investigation

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The state has shut down a residential treatment center in northeast Texas, three months after one of its charges — an 11-year-old boy — died in an incident that foster care officials and local law enforcement are investigating.

The boy died in a Greenville movie theater during an outing the day before Thanksgiving, according to three people who are familiar with the investigations. Other boys who lived at the center told Joe Sterner, the Lone Oak school district’s police chief, that the boy had complained about a stomach ache and had sustained a head wound in recent days.

“I guess when they were about to head out to go to the movies, he was in the bathroom, crying real bad that he was hurting real bad and they still told him to get on the van,” Sterner said.

It is not known if the child died from an underlying illness related to stomach pain or from a wound that he had on his head before he entered the Greenville movie theater.

The boy and his fellow housemates watched the movie and by the time it ended, the child was dead, one of the people familiar with the case said.

“The lights came up and the child had blood coming down his nose and he was deceased,” said one source, who spoke on condition that their name not be used because they do not want to hurt their professional relationship with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees the state’s foster care system operations.

It is not clear if Thompson’s staff members who accompanied the children to the movie theater, sought medical treatment for the child. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees licensing of foster care facilities, said Thursday that Thompson’s Residential Treatment Center license has been revoked.

“HHSC determined Thompson’s Residential Treatment Center posed an immediate threat to the health or safety of children,” Jennifer Ruffcorn, commission spokesperson said in an email.

DFPS moved quickly to terminate its contract with Thompson’s Residential Treatment Center, but the action was also made quietly following dozens of previous deficiencies alleged in state records and by nearby residents. The residential treatment facility, or RTC, where the boy was staying is one of dozens contracted with the state to house and treat the most traumatized and mentally ill foster care children.

News of the child’s death surfaced publicly for the first time Monday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing focused on the state budget. DFPS and the Hunt County Sheriff’s Department are each investigating the boys’ death. Both agencies declined to publicly speak about their separate inquiries.

A DFPS spokesperson confirmed that the boy, whose name has not been released, died on Nov. 27. The death occurred six weeks after the state won a legal battle in federal court that removed the judge presiding over a 14-year lawsuit against Texas’ child welfare system.

The Tribune made several unsuccessful attempts to reach the facility. Public records suggest it is owned by Chaun Thompson, who spent seven years in the NFL playing first for the Cleveland Browns, then the Houston Texans until he was sidelined by an injury in 2009. He also could not be reached.

The Tribune was able to reach Julie Fox, who according to LinkedIn, was Thompson’s treatment director from November 2009 through December 2024, but she declined to comment.

The Tribune learned of the child’s death from a passing comment made by state Sen. Angela Paxton more than two hours into Monday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing. Senators and Texas Health Commissioner Cecile Young and her chief financial officer, Trey Wood, were discussing a budget proposal that would add regulatory staff for inspections of long term care providers.

“Tragically, in my district, there was an 11-year-old boy who passed away this past November while he was under the care of a licensed residential treatment center which has since had its license revoked and children placed in other centers,” Paxton said at the 2:23 mark of that hearing.

“The investigation is ongoing so I will not speak to particulars of the case but I would like to just chime in on this issue as it is something very tangible and concrete in my district,” she said.

Paxton declined to comment further to the Tribune.

A history of problems

All 20 children who were living at Thompson’s were removed within a week of the death and placed elsewhere, according to the agency.

Interviews and a search of public records and news accounts show the facility has had problems of varying severity over the last several years. Children have been injured and there have been multiple calls for service made to the facility, which consists of two large houses side-by-side along Farm to Market Road 1564, southeast of Greenville in Hunt County. One local law enforcement officer, who asked not to be named, said it was known as “the runaway center” because of how often police are asked to locate its residents who have run away from the facility.

The state maintains a database that lists deficiencies at residential treatment centers over a 5-year period. Thompson’s had 84 reported deficiencies with more than a third of them reported in the past year and 12 of them were considered the most severe. There were 117 reports, 1 assessment, 10 self-reported incidents and 69 inspections.

Notably, the state visited the facility one day before the boy’s death and found no deficiencies, according to the state database.

Among the more serious deficiencies at Thompson’s listed in the state’s database include:

• On Aug. 4, 2023, a child was able to leave the facility because he was not properly supervised.
• On Aug 14, 2023, a caregiver grabbed a 14-year-old by the neck.
• On Nov. 1, 2023, a staffer “engaged in a physical altercation with a 17 year old child in care. The staff actions placed the child at risk for significant harm.”
• On April 22, two children were involved in a fight leaving one with a black eye.
• On June 16, the facility failed to follow a child’s treatment plan. The day before it was reported that staff failed to intervene in an altercation that resulted in a child being hurt.
• On July 26 and July 2, it was reported a child received a cut under his eye as a result of an altercation with another child.
• On Aug. 2, the facility did not restrict duties for provisional employees and supervision rules were violated.
• On Sept. 19, two unsupervised residents got into a fight at the facility.

Thompson’s file is also filled with several reports of holes left unrepaired in the walls and exposed wiring, broken windows and broken blinds.

Coverage from the local newspaper, Herald Banner, also chronicled serious problems over the years. In February 2020, two boys ran away from Thompson’s and were on their own for weeks before being located, according to the paper’s reporting. On April 18, 2015, Hunt County sheriff’s department sent deputies to investigate an alleged sexual assault of a child by a staff member there, the paper said. On March 22, 2011, the news outlet reported deputies investigating an attack on staff by several of the boys living there.

The Tribune has filed a request for all calls to the sheriff’s office.

Systemic challenges

Residential treatment centers are inspected, licensed and monitored by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Depending on the level of care needed, the state pays residential treatment facilities between $52.71 to $480.86 per child per day. The agency did not release on Thursday how much it paid Thompson to run the center.

It is not unusual for foster care children to run away from residential treatment centers or engage in physical altercations with each other and staff. The chronic issues found at the more than 80 residential treatment centers statewide are often subjects of the 14-year lawsuit against the Texas’ foster care system.

Since 2019, the state foster care system has been found in contempt of the court three times for failing to follow U.S. District Judge Janis Jack’s orders to fix deficiencies. At the center of the battle are the roughly 9,000 children in permanent state custody, removed from their homes due to abuse at home, complex health needs that parents are unable to manage, or the loss of their family caregivers, among other circumstances.

Many of the most vulnerable children have been left in dangerous placements including residential centers with poor supervision, the court has found. The last time a child placed in a residential treatment center died was in 2021.

The reason facilities tend to locate in rural areas, former long-time Hunt County commissioner Phillip Martin said, is because there are less stringent regulations in unincorporated areas than locating inside a city.

Martin said rural communities need to consider how much pressure such a facility — one that houses children with behavior issues — puts on local resources, particularly its public school system and its law enforcement.

“Yet again, the state is shutting down a dangerous facility after another tragedy. Innocent children are still dying in state care,” said Paul Yetter, the attorney for the plaintiffs in the 14-year foster care lawsuit against DFPS. “This is not a safe system.”