The mother of a 7-year-old boy who drowned in an Adams County pond has sued the county’s child-protection agency, the boy’s father and the pond owner.
In a wrongful-death claim filed last week, Sherry Reis alleges the county’s Department of Social Services reunited her son, Virgil Wagner, with a fath er who “had substantial drug problems” and was previously convicted of negligent homicide.
The agency then failed to act on reports that Virgil was not attending school, that there was drug trafficking behind his home and that Virgil “was living in an unsafe environment with broken glass on the floor, no running water and dirty living conditions,” according to the lawsuit.
Virgil was living with his father, and visiting his mother every other weekend, when he drowned two years ago. His body was pulled from a murky pond near his father’s home, where the boy had been playing unsupervised for hours.
Virgil’s father, William Fred Wagner, was arrested two months later on charges of running a methamphetamine lab out of his home. He has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Donald Cassata, Adams County’s social services director, could not be reached for comment.
Cassata previously said that child-abuse caseworkers who went to check on Virgil were unaware his father was the target of a drug-surveillance operation.
In a report last year, a Colorado Department of Human Services child-fatality review team found that before Virgil drowned, caseworkers were sent to his home three times but left without seeing the boy.
Altogether, the agency had fielded 18 calls in 13 years concerning the household of Virgil’s father.
According to Colorado Department of Corrections records, Wagner was imprisoned in 1997 on weapons and criminally negligent homicide charges. He was paroled in 1999 and eventually reunited with his son.
Sherry Reis’ lawyer, Ben Klein, acknowledged it is difficult to sue a government agency whose employees are covered by a state immunity law.
But he believes the mother can claim her civil rights were violated because “they didn’t do anything to supervise or check on the child” after being notified Virgil was in danger.
The lawsuit also accuses Angelo Palombo, who owned the retention pond where Virgil drowned, of failing to guard it from children who regularly played there.
Palombo said the pond was built according to municipal standards and parental neglect was the cause of Virgil’s death.
“The reason the kid drowned was the parent was dealing drugs,” he said. A next-door neighbor “told that kid five times to get out of the pond that day.”
Staff writer David Olinger can be reached at 303-820-1498 or dolinger@denverpost.com.