Teens Easily Fled Custody Before Murder Case Shows Persistent Shortage Of Facilities For Juvenile Offenders

Mountain Home officials were warned by two judges that their juvenile holding facility was a safety risk, months before two youths walked away from it.

Ronald Stiner, 16, and Eric S. Brown, 18, fled from the non-secure trailer in Mountain Home on Tuesday night. They were charged Thursday with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Forest Service engineer David J. Wheeler.

Funeral services for Wheeler will be conducted at 3 p.m. today in the Baker City, Ore., high school auditorium.

Magistrates Michael McLaughlin and John R. Sellman were so concerned last summer about lack of security that they refused to order more youths to be held in the trailer. They later relented.

“The (Elmore County) commissioners have been placed on notice for years as to the potential problems,” McLaughlin said.

He wants to talk with the commissioners and Elmore County Sheriff Rick Layher before deciding whether he will continue to ship youths to the trailer.

Meanwhile, divers searched the swift Snake River between Idaho and Oregon, looking for the weapon believed used in the killing - a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle. An all-day search on Friday by the Washington County sheriff’s office turned up nothing.

The escapes highlight an ongoing problem in Idaho’s juvenile justice system, where beds in secure facilities are nearly always full - and juveniles who have committed serious crimes are waiting to be incarcerated. Sometimes, they are free on the streets.

“It’s hard to have security in the setting they have down there,” said Art Dodson, director of Ada County Juvenile Court Services, site of Boise’s secure 32-bed detention center.

“Small counties have a terrible time, because they rely on the eight juvenile detention centers in the state. When they’re full, (the small-county youths) have no place to go.”

Ada County provides two beds under contract for Elmore County juvenile violators. Dodson said those two beds are always full - as is the rest of the Boise facility.

The secure Boise detention center has 32 beds, but it’s been crowded with as many as 42. The backlog waiting to get into the Boise center has been as high as 150 youths, Dodson said.

Layher wasn’t available for an interview at his office Friday and didn’t return a message left at his home.

But other law-enforcement officials described the one-story, aluminum-sided trailer as easy to flee. A secure facility is locked at all times, with youths’ activities monitored.

Juveniles have walked away from the Mountain Home trailer before, prompting the threatened boycott of the trailer by the judges.

In July 1994, three juveniles escaped from the trailer and were captured the same day after stealing a car.

On Aug. 12, 1994, the two magistrates wrote Sheriff Layher that they would not put any more juveniles in the trailer until the judges were satisfied that all the attendants were properly trained and had criminal background checks.

They changed their minds after Layher provided them the information they requested.

In an Aug. 17, 1994, letter to the judges, a frustrated Layher said the non-secure facility was “basically dumped on the Elmore County sheriff’s office without any additional manpower or resources to operate it.”

McLaughlin said Friday that Layher acted properly in putting the two youths later charged in the Wheeler shooting in the non-secure trailer. They were charged with car theft but had no record of violent conduct.

The Elmore County Commission met with the sheriff Thursday and said at the time they wouldn’t comment on the escapes until Layher completed his investigation.

The trailer is designed to hold youths only a couple of hours, and those were runaways or other non-violent offenders, officials said. Brown and Stiner were held for two days.

They were first arrested April 23 and were noticed missing from the trailer at 9:15 p.m. Tuesday. Authorities say they stole a truck in Elmore County before going to the Weiser area.

Both youths had moved to the Mountain Home area within the last couple of years. Brown transferred to Mountain Home High School from Santa Paula, Calif., as a freshman last year. He didn’t enroll this year, Principal Doug Johnson said.

Stiner transferred to Mountain Home High School from Payette in November 1993, and began home-schooling in January 1994.