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Father of infant pleads guilty to manslaughter

Stafford man was accused of shaking his 6-week-old son

by Tom Jackman

A Stafford County man pleaded

guilty Monday to manslaughter for shaking his 6-week-old son to death in their home last year. The plea marked the latest out- come in a string of recent cases in- volving “shaken baby syndrome,” including two trials in Fairfax County in which experts testified that babies could not be fatally shaken without evidence of other injuries. In Stafford, baby Marcus Andre had numerous other injuries, and a Stafford prosecutor said that “medical evidence is overwhelm- ingly clear” that shaken baby syn- drome is real. Jason W. Andre, 30, called 911

early June 29 to report that his son was having trouble breathing at the family’s home on Beech Drive in Stafford. The first sher- iff’s deputy to arrive performed CPR on the baby, Stafford Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Eric L. Olsen said, then paramedics ar- rived and took him to Stafford Hospital Center. From there, Marcus was flown to the pediatric intensive care unit at Inova Fairfax Hospital. “It was obvious to the doctors there,” Olsen said, that “the baby had suf- fered severe brain injury. The baby was brain dead upon arriv- al.”

Marcus, who was born May 14,

was kept alive until July 1. He had a 2-year-old brother, Olsen said. Marcus had two types of brain hemorrhages, Olsen said, subdu- ral and subarachnoid, and he also had retinal hemorrhages, all key indicators of shaken baby syn- drome. Olsen said X-rays showed that Marcus also had rib fractures that had occurred a week or two earlier. An autopsy noted bruises

on his right shoulder and but- tocks, a tongue laceration, a flat- tening on his head and a spinal cord injury, Olsen said. In August, Jason Andre was in-

dicted on charges of murder, ma- licious wounding and child ne- glect. When police searched An- dre’s home, Olsen said, they found a gun and the initial stages of a marijuana-growing operation. Andre had a prior felony convic- tion that prohibited legal gun ownership. He then was charged with being a felon in possession of a gun and attempting to manufac- ture marijuana. Prosecutors agreed to reduce the murder charge to manslaugh- ter, dismiss the malicious-wound- ing charge and reduce the levels of the neglect, gun and marijuana charges in exchange for a guilty plea, Olsen said. There is no agreement on the sentence, which Stafford Circuit Court Judge Charles Sharp will impose June 28. The child abuse charge has a range of two to 10 years, the range for manslaughter is as much as 10 years and there is a mandatory two-year term for pos- sessing the gun. Frank Salvato, Andre’s attorney, said the plea agreement “repre- sented a fair compromise, and my client accepted responsibility and is looking forward to a fair and just sentence.” In January, a Fairfax jury found

a day-care provider guilty of child abuse for shaking a baby and sen- tenced her to more than 10 years in prison. But in March, another Fairfax jury acquitted a father of fatally shaking his baby. In both cases, experts testified about the validity of shaken baby syndrome. Olsen said there were “only a

few” doctors who “make a good living” by testifying against shak- en baby syndrome. “Of the thou- sands of doctors who treat abused children,” Olsen said, “they all know violent shaking can cause devastating and deadly injury to a child.”

jackmant@washpost.com

Judge declares mistrial in fatal parking dispute

by Keith L. Alexander

It was a case that stunned the

Washington area: A man is shot to death after an argument over a double-parked car in a Southeast Washington neighborhood in 2008.

On Monday, after a week of de-

liberations, a D.C. Superior Court jury was unable to decide wheth- er Ronald Wynn Jr., 37, was guilty of first-degree murder or was de- fending himself after an argu- ment escalated. Judge Herbert B. Dixon Jr. declared a mistrial. The complicated details of the shooting emerged gradually dur- ing Wynn’s two-week trial. He was arrested in the shooting of Daniel Clark, 28, on July 28, 2008, after Wynn double-parked his sil- ver Cadillac in the 3100 block of Buena Vista Terrace SE and blocked Clark’s car. When Clark’s wife began arguing with Wynn about his car, Clark intervened. Wynn was charged with seven counts, including first-degree murder while armed and ob- struction. On Friday, the jury informed the judge that it had reached a partial verdict, finding Wynn guilty of obstruction and gun pos- session. But the jury said it was unable to reach a verdict on a murder charge. Prosecutors said they will retry the case in August. Wynn remains in the D.C. jail. The slaying occurred as dozens

of Clark’s relatives and friends were having a cookout. Wynn, who had worked as a Metrobus

Daniel Clark

driver for sev- en months, was off duty at the time.

Emotions

were high as dozens of family mem- bers and friends of Clark’s and

Wynn’s, many of whom said they witnessed the shooting, testified about how the gathering turned deadly. Wynn’s attorney, James W. Ru-

dasill Jr., said his client was de- fending himself and argued that Clark beat Wynn for arguing with his wife, and then threatened to shoot Wynn before Wynn walked to his car, retrieved a gun and shot Clark once in the left temple before driving away. Clark died hours later. Rudasill said Clark threw the

first punch to Wynn’s face and then beat Wynn, leaving him bloodied and his shirt torn. “Dan- iel Clark was aggressive. Is it murder to defend yourself if someone comes up to you and cold-cocks you and threatens to kill you?” Rudasill asked the jury. Rudasill argued that Clark also had a gun and that a friend of Clark’s removed the gun from the scene.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney

Sharad S. Khandelwal said there was no evidence that Clark had a gun. The prosecutor said Wynn chased Clark down the street and cornered him, leaving Clark “pleading for his life.”

alexanderk@washpost.com

LOTTERIES

March 29

DISTRICT

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Night/Pick-3 (Sun.): Pick-3 (Mon.): Pick-4 (Sun.): Pick-4 (Mon.): Multi-Match:

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3-5-9-11-26-29 *2 2-8-11-12-26-31 *1

0-6-0

8-7-9-0 2-0-7 3-0-9

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7-20-22-25-27 8-1-8 N/A

5-9-6-7 N/A

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*Bonus Ball All winning lottery numbers are official only when validated at a lottery ticket location or a lottery claims office. Because of late drawings, some results do not appear in early editions. For late lottery results, check www.washingtonpost.com/lottery.

PHOTOS BY SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Dixi Wu sits to the left of instructor Emily Lugo in a Bullis School class for students learning English as a foreign language.

Foreign students boost U.S. schools

foreign from B1

language courses. For American private schools, the rising interest from East Asia comes at a key moment. The re- cession has forced many U.S. families to reconsider whether they can afford the costs of tui- tion and lodging. Charitable giv- ing and endowments also have suffered. Many schools are grap- pling with fewer applications and, in the worst cases, the possi- bility of closure.

Bullis was not in such dire

straits, school officials said, but applications from U.S. students dipped last year, while demand was up in China. The Potomac school, on an 80-acre wooded campus, started admitting stu- dents from China several years earlier with help from an educa- tion agent. The academic suc- cesses of the initial students, as well as the introduction of a Chi- nese language program, also en- couraged Farquhar to expand his school’s global reach. “We wanted to increase aware-

ness at our school of this very im- portant country far away,” Far- quhar said. After his recruiting tour last

year, he offered admission to 10 students. Seven accepted, includ- ing Dixi, who said goodbye to her parents and their modern high- rise apartment and moved in with a Bullis social studies teach- er and her family. Fiercely competitive education systems in East Asia are helping stoke a culture of study abroad. The number of families looking overseas for an alternate way up the career ladder has dropped in Korea recently but grown in Viet- nam and boomed in China, where such students are called “xiao liu xue sheng,” or “little ex- change students.” In the United

Dixi works out with teammates at track practice. Such extra- curricular activities are part of the draw for many foreign students.

States, they have been called “parachute kids,” coming here alone to pursue their degrees. The financial strain for many parents is intense. Study abroad can cost tens of thousands of dol- lars a year for tuition and living expenses. But many consider it a reliable investment because Western degrees and English flu- ency are highly valued in the job market at home, said Min Zhou, a sociologist at the University of California at Los Angeles who has studied parachute kids from East Asia. “In China, if you fail that one

exam, you are done,” Zhou said, referring to the annual college entrance exam.

English-speaking countries vie for the academically driven trav- elers. Canadian schools, strapped by declining enrollments, have formed an association to strengthen recruiting efforts abroad. In Australia, where inter- national education revenue has surpassed that of tourism, specif- ic government agencies oversee the foreign scholars.

on washingtonpost.com

To see a photo gallery of more foreign students in class, at sports practice and at home, visit

washingtonpost.com/local.

In the United States, public high schools charge tuition for those on student visas and limit enrollment to one year, so most attend private schools. Sandy Spring Friends School in Mont- gomery County has 54 foreign students, including 11 who ar- rived from China in January af- ter a fall recruiting fair. Montrose Christian School in Rockville in- creased its foreign enrollment from about 30 students to 44 this year and appointed its first dean of international students. At Paul VI Catholic High School in Fair- fax City, 31 teens have student visas, up from 13 five years ago. Arriving alone and with lim- ited English skills, foreign stu- dents add new and weighty re- sponsibilities to schools. Some schools provide extensive Eng- lish-language training and sup-

“We wanted to increase awareness at our school of this very important country far

away.”

— Tom Farquhar, headmaster of

Bullis School, on working to attract students from China.

port; others require applicants to pass English proficiency tests or find their own housing. At Fairfax Christian School in Vienna, foreign students make up well over half of the high school and a quarter of the mid- dle school. New arrivals were greeted in August with a fife and drum troupe and a barbecue on the school’s front lawn. The cur- riculum includes courses in Eng- lish as a foreign language and grounding in American culture, the Bible and free-market eco- nomics. The school, which charges

$14,400 for tuition, plus thou- sands more for transportation and lodging, largely caters to Asian industrialist families, said director Jo Thoburn. Her Ad- vanced Placement economics class last year had 23 students whose parents owned 35 facto- ries in Asia. “This is not your typ- ical group,” she said. Min So Kim, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Chungbuk, South Korea, explained her par- ents’ decision to send her to live with relatives in Haymarket this way: “My father hopes I study English very well and become a famous person.”

chandlerm@washpost.com

TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 2010

Nursing assistant on trial in death

SAT ON PATIENT TO CALM HIM

Focus on St. Elizabeths Hospital’s training

by Keith L. Alexander

When he was a child, Mark

Harris’s mother knew something was wrong with her only son. He would run away from home

and often would be found at a nearby fire station watching the fire trucks, something he loved to do growing up. When Harris was 14, doctors

officially diagnosed his mental problems, including bipolar and impulse control issues. For the next 20 years, he would become a regular patient at St. Elizabeths Hospital, the city’s public psychi- atric facility in Southeast Wash- ington, often staying for months, even years, at a time in between stints at his mother’s house and group homes. On Jan. 9, 2007, while at St.

Elizabeths, Harris, a large man, began arguing with another pa- tient. When Harris got upset, ac- cording to witnesses, he would

often bang his head against a wall, which he began doing that day. He then threw a chair and tossed some papers in the air. One of the nursing assistants, Calvin Green, 54, tried to calm Harris down. When words failed, Green grabbed Harris from be- hind, put him in a chokehold, threw him to the floor and sat on Harris’s chest for about 10 min- utes as he waited for other staff- ers to come to his aid, according to court records.

When Green released him,

Harris had turned blue and be- gan foaming at the mouth, Assis- tant U.S. Attorney Vinet Bryant told the jury Monday in the courtroom of D.C. Superior Court Judge Gerald I. Fisher. Within minutes, Harris, 39, was dead. Green was charged with involun- tary manslaughter. As part of her opening state- ment, Bryant told the jury that Green, a 30-year employee of the hospital, went outside the hospi- tal’s guidelines by using excessive force to calm Harris. “He didn’t act in accordance with his train- ing or experience,” Bryant told the jury. “He snapped and overre- acted to a patient he thought had a problem.” But Green’s attorneys, Janet

Mitchell and Eugene Ohm of the District’s Public Defender Serv-

ice, argued that their client used the best method available to him to calm a patient who was “vio- lent, aggressive and scary” and had had numerous outbursts in the past, endangering staff, other patients and himself. They said past incidents included Harris biting, choking and throwing bleach on others during fits of an- ger. Ohm argued that Green, who had known Harris for about 10 years, was defending himself with a “reasonable amount of force.” The training and staffing of employees at St. Elizabeths, as well as the care of its patients, has been under intense scrutiny in re- cent years. Last year, the District paid

$1 million to the family of Alan Martin, a patient of the hospital who was stomped to death by an- other patient in 2004; that same year, Willie Fraley, 76, was fatally beaten by another patient. Previ- ously, the hospital staff was crit- icized for not properly supervis- ing Frank Harris Jr., who used his hands to gouge out his own eyes in March 2003. In 1997, the District agreed to implement a long list of improve- ments as part of a settlement with the Justice Department, which had threatened to sue over widespread deficiencies at the

hospital. Since then, the hospital has tried to improve its opera- tions by reducing the number of patients and shifting others to community-based treatment fa- cilities.

Still, observers of the hospital

say problems continue. A year af- ter Mark Harris’s death, a review by University Legal Services, the advocacy group that represents patients at the hospital, found employees provided “inadequate and neglectful medical care,” called the nursing staffing “in- sufficient” and minimal, and said hospital staffing levels failed to meet the patients’ health-care needs. Bryant, however, spent most of

Monday questioning hospital em- ployees about staff training. The jury learned that the workers re- ceive annual training on how to properly restrain patients and specific use of nonviolent crisis intervention. They also heard that Green went through a re- straint evaluation a month before Harris’s death. Afterward, Harris’s mother, Glenna Lewis, who testified Mon- day and has filed a $25 million negligence suit in federal court, said she wanted “justice to be served and done” in her son’s death.

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