Father Of One Of The Teens Who Escaped Speaks Out At DCS Public Forum

Wallace Nabaa, the father of Kuyvonta Cain, one of the teens still on the loose from the Woodland Hills Youth Development Center questions DCS Commissioner Jim Henry. Credit: Bobby Allyn/WPLN

At a public forum held at a YMCA in north Nashville, Department of Children Services Commissioner Jim Henry spent more than an hour telling a crowd of around 300 what has changed since 32 teens broke out of the Woodland Hills facility.

Henry said DCS failed by not making sure the detention center was better secured. He also said state law places constraints how far they can take security measures. For instance, guards are not allowed to be armed at juvenile detention facilities, and the teens’ room doors must stay unlocked.

Henry said since the escape, the facility’s weak spots have been addressed. He recently showed Gov. Bill Haslam some of the improvements, including stronger fencing, which encircles the building. Furthermore, internal rules have been tweaked allowing staff to call police for any disturbance — before, DCS guards could only involve police when there was a confirmed escape.

Three of the 32 teens who originally broke free are still at large. Authorities arrested two teens Monday after they were spotted in an apartment parking lot about 4 miles from Woodland Hills.

At the public event, Wallace Nabaa was among those who lined up to address DCS officials. He’s the father of 17-year-old Kuyvonta Cain, one of the teens still at large. He said when he visited the facility to see his son, the level of security was like “kids baby-sitting kids.”

He witnessed guards taunting and teasing the teenagers.

“You got a 21-year-old that thinks on the level of the child, and a child says ‘yo momma.’ I’ve actually seen it, witnessed, the person come back to the child and say, ‘yo momma, too,’ so you just uproared that child.”

He went on to say: “There had to be something wrong with this facility. Because all of these kids are not just gonna get up and leave, or wanting to leave.”

Nabba said his son was scheduled to be released from the detention center this Friday. Before the break out, Nabba left five unreturned messages on a Woodland Hills answering machine, trying to get an update about his son’s medicine. He said his son has been struggling with mental illness.

“It doesn’t make any sense of the things we had to do to even get my son to even touch medicine,” he said. “And now he’s out of the streets running without medicine, and he’s been on medicine since he was three.”

He called on his son to turn himself in and on DCS officials to better involve parents.

DCS cut off questions before all those lined up to speak had a chance to reach the microphone.