Danieal Kelly Case: Graphic Testimony in Health Care Fraud Case Against MultiEthnic Social Workers

Graphic testimony and photographs were presented in the continuing health care fraud case of four MultiEthnic Behavior Heath, Inc. employees, stemming from the death of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly. The defense had unsuccessfully attempted to have the photos excluded from evidence. After briefly displaying the photos, which brought some jurors to tears, Assistant Medical Examiner Edwin Lieberman described Danieal Kelly's injuries at the time of death.

Lieberman testified that the 14-year-old's body was in "deplorable" condition, bugs flying out when he opened the body bag. He said that the causes of Danieal Kelly's death were bedsores two to three inches in diameter, and neglect, malnutrition and heat stress. He said maggots were living on her skin, and that malnutrition had rendered her "beyond emaciation." Lieberman said he erred in 2006 when he initially listed the cause of death as cerebral palsy, which in itself is not a fatal disease.

Former MultiEthnic employee Alan Speed's testimony insinuated that the conditions at the Kelly home were acceptable when he monitored them. He said he made twice weekly visits from the end of 2005 to March of 2006, when he left MultiEthnic. He said Andrea Kelly kept the home clean and "fairly orderly," and the older children were in school. He said Danieal Kelly, while thin and confined to bed or a wheelchair, "appeared normal," calling her health "fine." He testified that there was never an odor, and that Andrea Kelly had scrubbed the home before Christmas in 2005. Conceding that the home wasn't "pristine," he said it was "decent."

On August 4, 2006, the day Danieal died, DHS investigator John P. Dougherty found a much different atmosphere than described by Speed. Dougherty testified that he was shocked by "the terrible smell. It smelled like fecal matter." He described the Kelly home as a "jumbled mess of clothes, shoes, broken furniture and other household items." Multiple cans of air freshener were found in a bedroom that connected to Danieal Kelly's room.

A DHS employee testified that when they demanded that MultiEthnic turn over the Kelly file after Danieal's death, defendant Kamuvaka told them the copier was broken, and offered to have it by the following Monday. DHS sent a courier over that same day for the original. Alan Speed testified that, after Danieal Kelly's death and months after he left MultiEthnic, he received a call from Mickal Kamuvaka, insisting that he come in and write up missing paperwork from the Kelly file. Speed said Kamuvaka demanded that he fill out forms for home visits he never made. Describing the office, he said, "It was almost like an assembly line."

Four employees of the now-defunct MultiEthnic Behavioral Health, Inc., administrators Mickal Kamuvaka and Solomon Manamela, and case workers Julius Juma Murray and Mariam Coulibaly, are on trial in federal court on charges of health-care fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and lying to the grand jury and federal agents.

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Source: WPVI-TV 6; Philadelphia Inquirer at Philly.Com