The father of a 15-year-old boy who hanged himself with a bedsheet in the Hamilton County Juvenile Detention Center last year has filed a lawsuit seeking $3.75 million from the county.
In the lawsuit, David Wallace claims center employees failed to follow policy that could have prevented his son’s death.
On June 29, 2010, Austin David Wallace ran away from the Scholze Center, an adolescent treatment facility run by the Council for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services in North Chattanooga. A city police officer arrested him about midnight that same day for burglarizing a car downtown, according to the Hamilton County Circuit Court complaint.
Austin Wallace was taken to the detention center at 1:29 a.m. on June 30.
Center employees called the Scholze Center to tell them the boy had been admitted. The next day, employees moved him to the “overflow wing” where he stayed with another teen. Wallace stayed alone that day while the other teen went to school, the suit states.