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Months after the criminal case stemming from the death of a 64-year-old man in a local group home was dismissed, his family has begun the process of filing a wrongful death lawsuit.
On Thursday, David C. Beville’s brother, Dennis Beville of Plymouth, filed a petition asking an Allen Superior Court judge to appoint an administrator for the sole purpose of collecting damages for wrongful death.
Allen Superior Court Judge Stanley Levine granted his request.
In April 2007, David Beville died at a local nursing home. He had been taken there after falling ill at an AWS – formerly Anthony Wayne Services – group home.
His death was initially believed to be from natural causes, but when the results of a toxicology test came back from Indianapolis-based AIT Laboratories, Beville’s death was ruled a homicide.
Lab results indicated Beville had a blood-alcohol level of 0.231 percent, according to court documents.
The state’s legal limit for a blood-alcohol level is 0.08 percent.
After a subsequent investigation, the cause of death was ruled to be acute alcohol and oxcarbazepine toxicity.
AWS employees Erica Wheeler and Valerie Mann were each charged with neglect of a dependent causing death.
Beville suffered from several health problems, including blindness and mental retardation, and he needed assistance to eat and drink.
At the time of his death, he suffered from serious constipation leading to hospitalization, according to court documents.
Doctors prescribed oxcarbazepine, an anti-seizure medication, for Beville, but the presence of alcohol and nicotine in the forensic samples was difficult to explain.
He did not smoke and was not exposed to secondhand smoke. He also did not drink alcohol, which was prohibited at the group homes by AWS.
The charges against Mann and Wheeler were dismissed in October after AIT Laboratories failed to hang on to a second forensic sample from Beville, in spite of requests by the defense attorneys that the laboratory do so.
Without the presence of the second sample, prosecutors said they could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the first sample came from Beville.
