A major shakeup has occurred in the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice, less than a month after 16-year-old Gynnya McMillen died in a state-run detention center. Commissioner Bob Hayter is gone, according to sources and an employee in Hayter’s former office.
Hayter had been with the department since 2006. Sources have also confirmed that Stacy Floden, the department’s director of communications program services also has left. Hayter’s and Floden’s departures come on the heels of Gynnya’s death last month at a juvenile detention center in Hardin County.
Hers was the first death in a state-run juvenile-detention center since 1999. Investigations into Gynnya’s death are continuing, and the Department of Juvenile Justice has so far disclosed minimal information about the circumstances surrounding it.
But the agency has acknowledged that she was not properly monitored by Lincoln Village staff in the hours prior to her death, and that she was physically restrained by staff after refusing to remove her hooded sweatshirt.
