http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20100205_Log_of_calls_on_day_teen_d...

Log of calls on day teen died is missing, aide says

By Nathan Gorenstein  Inquirer Staff Writer  Posted on Fri, Feb. 5,
2010

A call log listing messages from the day Danieal Kelly died is missing
from documents turned over to federal prosecutors, and a witness
yesterday described how the agency responsible for ensuring her health
learned of the handicapped teenager's death.
Silibaziso Sibanda, a billing clerk who rose to be office manager at
MultiEthnic Behavioral Health Inc., stifled a sob as she recalled
taking the call from a Philadelphia official on Aug. 4, 2006.

Kelly, 14, had cerebral palsy, weighed 42 pounds, and was covered with
bedsores when she died of starvation in her mother's West Philadelphia
home.

Sibanda also confirmed a government assertion that the company's
office call log skips from Aug. 3 to Aug. 7, and she said torn-up
slivers of paper shown to the jury appeared to have been ripped from
the log. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bea Witzleben did not explicitly
state that the shreds included the missing pages.

Four MultiEthnic employees, including a founder, Mickal Kamuvaka, are
charged with failing to provide in-home social services to Kelly and
other children that the city's Department of Human Services had hired
them to perform.

Included were visits to Kelly's home that the government says never
happened. The defendants are accused of tossing out subpoenaed
documents after learning of her death and fabricating paperwork to
make it appear the work had been done.

Sibanda, who received an accounting degree from Temple University
after immigrating from Zimbabwe, said that after a DHS worker called
with news of Kelly's death, she contacted Kamuvaka and the social
worker assigned to the family, Julius Juma Murray.

Both arrived within an hour, and Murray spent part of the day filling
out paperwork in the conference room, Sibanda said. She added that she
had presumed it was "notes about the girl that died," but U.S.
District Judge Stewart Dalzell struck that answer after a defense
objection.

Sibanda also said Kamuvaka had told her that if approached by
investigators "not to talk to them because I wouldn't know who they
are . . . [unless] they should subpoena me."

Kamuvaka, 60, who was the agency's program director, has a doctorate
in social work from the University of Pennsylvania, and is one of four
MultiEthnic founders. A second founder, Solomon Manamela, 52 is also
on trial, along with Murray, 52, and Mariam Coulibaly, 42, a former
caseworker.

MultiEthnic had contracts with the DHS from 2000 through 2006.
Testifying about how DHS had managed the agency was Brian Clapier, the
director of quality improvement.

Kelly's death launched state, city, and federal investigations, and
resulted in the demise of MultiEthnic, a prison sentence for the
teenager's mother, and the firing of a number of DHS workers.