Relatives Win $5M Settlement After Napa Toddler's Gruesome Death

NAPA, CA — The city of Napa and Napa County are paying a combined $5 million to a 3-year-old girl's family who accused them of not doing enough to prevent her death. The high-profile killing occurred in 2014, when officers performing a welfare check and found 3-year-old Kayleigh Slusher dead in a suitcase on a bed at her mom's house. Investigators say she had been beaten and sexually assaulted before her body was stuffed in a freezer.

Her mom, Sara Lynn Krueger, and her mom's boyfriend, Ryan Scott Warner, were both convicted in Kayleigh's killing and are serving life sentences in prison.

But attorneys for Kayleigh's dad, Jason Slusher, and grandmother, Robin Slusher, say police and child welfare workers were also at fault.

"It took a village to kill Kayleigh," Julia Sherwin, one of the Slushers' attorneys, said in a statement. "Two of the people responsible for her death were held accountable in the criminal courts. We filed this case to bring reform and accountability to the rest of the people who caused
Kayleigh's death."

A complaint filed in Napa County Superior Court by the Haddad & Sherwin law firm outlines a number of alleged failures by the Napa Police Department and Napa County Child Welfare Services.

Officers had been called to the home nine times in the nine months before Kayleigh was killed, according to Napa police.

Sherwin and her partner Michael Haddad said that about a week before Kayleigh's death, her grandmother anonymously reported that people were using drugs around the girl and one of them had a warrant out for his arrest.

The officer who was supposed to investigate decided it was "not safe" and cleared the call without looking into the allegations, according to the complaint.

The next day a neighbor allegedly called 911 to report a domestic violence dispute at the home. Nobody investigated or made a report about that call, according to the complaint.

Two officers responded to another domestic violence call a few days later and saw Kayleigh but did not report any abuse or take any action, according to the complaint.

A day before Kayleigh's death, two officers were again called to the home and saw she was gaunt and distressed, the complaint states. She vomited in front of them, but they still didn't investigate whether she was being abused, according to the complaint.

Napa Police Chief Robert Plummer defended the officers, saying that the officers didn't see any bruises or other signs of abuse on Kayleigh when they visited the home.

However, as part of the settlement agreement, the department has agreed to revamp its child abuse policy and is working with a consultant to update its protocols for investigating abuse. Officers will also be required to report allegations of child abuse to the district attorney's office and child welfare services, even if the allegations are unfounded.

"Any time a child is murdered, it's always a tragedy. My officers were impacted by it and to this day they still feel, they hurt over it," Plummer said in a phone interview Friday afternoon. "We will do our best to make sure this doesn't happen to any children in the future."

The county's child welfare workers were also aware of the abuse allegations and did nothing, according to the complaint.

In the settlement agreement, the county denied those allegations.

But officials did review the department's policies for handling hotline reports of abuse and implemented a second review for calls about children who have an open or past child welfare services case.

"While the County and CWS maintain that CWS followed state law when responding to the complaint of abuse or neglect, after more than three years of litigation, we came to the decision that it was best to end the litigation and settle the case," Deputy County Executive Officer Molly
Rattigan said in a statement.

Haddad and Sherwin said in a statement that the $5 million settlement is the largest in Napa history.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

• Napa Couple Sentenced To Life Without Parole For Torture Murder Of 3-Year-Old Girl
• Napa Jury Deliberates In Trial Of Man Charged In 3-Year-Old Girl's Killing
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By Bay City News Service

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