Iowa pays $175K after foster child beaten with a brick and drowned

Iowa will pay $175,000 to settle a lawsuit involving a foster child who was bludgeoned with a brick and drowned by another foster child.

Dominic Elkins was 5 and in foster care at the home of Donald and Julie Coolman of Logan when in 2013 another foster child, 17-year-old Cody Metzker-Madsen, used a brick to beat him and force his head under water.

Metzker-Madsen was later found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity and required to remain in state custody until a judge rules he is no longer a danger to himself or others.

Elkins’ birth mother, Barbara Christo of Lewis, filed a lawsuit against the state in 2015.

Christo alleged that both boys were known to have significant behavioral, developmental and psychiatric issues and should not have been placed together in the same home by the state.

The Iowa Appeal Board on Monday agreed to pay the $175,000 settlement for what Deputy Attorney General Jeff Thompson called “a very difficult and unfortunate incident.”

“It was our estimation that it was not the kind of case to risk taking to a jury,” Thompson said.

Iowa in October additionally agreed to pay $300,000 from the state’s foster home insurance fund, a separate state account used to pay for foster care claims.

Christo’s attorney Robert Stahle declined to discuss the case other than to say, “I feel from the standpoint of my client that, yeah, justice was done.”

The Iowa Department of Human Services has faced recent scrutiny regarding the separate deaths of Sabrina Ray and Natalie Finn, two girls who were adopted out of foster care and died in the last year following allegations of starvation and abuse.

Amy McCoy, a spokeswoman for DHS, said she was immediately unable to answer questions of how or if the foster care system had changed as a result of Dominic’s death in 2013.

“Our foster families open their homes to children who are neglected, abused or can't get the support they need at home, and this was a heart-wrenching and unique circumstance where tragedy struck two vulnerable children and the family that was trying to support them,” McCoy said in a statement.