Employees at a Phoenix group home who took care of a diabetic child who later died say they were never formally trained on how to manage his diabetes, according to newly released law enforcement records.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office released hundreds of pages of documents, hours of audio, and body camera video from its investigation into 9-year-old Jakob Blodgett’s death.
Blodgett was a type one diabetic who needed insulin. According to the autopsy, he died from complications of diabetes in December 2022, shortly after being placed in Arizona’s foster care system.
The ABC15 Investigators have aired several reports about how the system failed to protect Blodgett and properly manage his diabetes after being placed in the Arizona Department of Child Safety’s custody.
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The newly released records from MCSO include, for the first time, interviews with the group home staff where Blodgett was living when he was rushed to the emergency room.
“It is a fatal situation,” a hospital social worker said in one of the newly released calls with deputies.
The Department of Child Safety placed Blodgett in a Phoenix group home run by Sunshine Residential Homes.
“The 21 that’s when it just didn’t seem right,” the group home manager said in an initial interview with an MCSO detective after Blodgett's death.
The group home manager then described how she learned one of her employees let Blodgett refuse his insulin, the lifesaving medication he needed to live.
“When I came in, I found out that he, um, did not get his nighttime med,” the group manager explained to the detective. “My staff. I guess he just didn’t realize that he has to have that every night.”
“The young man needed [redacted] and he didn’t get it,” the MCSO detective said to a group home administrator in another recorded interview.
MCSO redacted portions of the audio interviews to remove medical information, but the incident report also detailed how an employee at the group home let Blodgett refuse his insulin.
The operations manager at Sunshine Residential Homes then told deputies it’s their policy not to force medicate children.
“I can’t force kids to do things, that’s not the kind of program we run,” the operations manager at the group home said to detectives.
Law enforcement immediately questioned the group home’s policy of not force-medicating children in the recorded interview.
“But would you agree, there’s a difference between a child whose taking medication – I don’t know a growth hormone versus if they don’t get it in 12 hours, say six, 12, 18 hours that they will die,” the detective said in response.
The decision to allow Blodgett to go without his insulin led a Phoenix Children’s social worker to call and make a report to MCSO in the hours after he was rushed to the ER. By then, it was too late.
“Possibly medical neglect or concerns of possible medical neglect,” said the hospital social worker to the dispatcher.
Another hospital social worker also expressed her concerns to deputies. “He was denying his medication. However, he’s an adolescent. Obviously, we can’t have them deny their medication,” she says in the body camera video.
According to the newly released audio, the weekend staff at the group home who took over Blodgett's care say they were never formally trained on how to manage Blodgett's diabetes. However, the group home manager and a group home administrator both attended a two-day diabetes training at the hospital before Blodgett was placed in their care.
“I’ve never had any training, formal training from Sunshine,” one of the group home staff members told the lead detective in an interview at his attorney’s office.
“It shows the group home agreed to take in a child with type one diabetes and didn’t do anything to properly train its staff. In my opinion, that training could have and should have saved his life,” said attorney Robert Pastor, who represents Blodgett's father. He recently filed a lawsuit against DCS and Sunshine Residential Homes.
Pastor said he believes the system failed to protect Blodgett.
“They [Blodgett's family] have a lot of questions. They want answers. They’re trying to figure out how could this possibly happen?” he said.
The audio interviews also bring into question whether group home staff were adequately checking Blodgett's blood sugars as many times as required on the prescription box.
“Were you told how many times a day his levels were to be checked?” the detective asked one of the group home employees.
“No, I wasn’t told by anybody,” the group home employee said.
Pastor said he wants MCSO to look at pursuing charges in the case.
“I think someone – the group home manager, the group home workers need to be charged criminally. They failed to provide this kid with basic medical care that this child needed,” Pastor said.
More than a year later, MCSO said deputies are still working on this case, and the investigation remains open. The agency has not decided whether to recommend any potential charges to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
ABC15 sent multiple emails to Sunshine Residential Homes, asking for comment about the newly released law enforcement records. Late Thursday, an employee at Sunshine Residential Homes who was reached by phone said the group home had no comment.
The Department of Child Safety also said it had no comment on the newly released law enforcement records, citing the pending litigation.
