Kankakee group home beating lawsuit: Vicious attack on disabled man caught on video

KANKAKEE, Ill. - A south suburban Blue Island mother is demanding accountability over the vicious beating of her disabled son, an attack that was captured on cellphone video.

"I want answers. I want to know what happened to my son," said Mickey Koncel-Stankewitz, who on Wednesday filed a civil lawsuit against the company that owns the group home in Kankakee where her son was beaten. "He was a very outgoing, gregarious young man. But at the same time, he was differently wired."

Stankewitz said her 30-year-old son Zach was diagnosed with autism as a child, along with other developmental disabilities. She says until two years ago he was talkative, active, and highly functional. But now, Zach has trouble speaking and thinking and is largely confined to a wheelchair at a nursing home in Downstate Gilman.

"(The beating) changed him immensely. Now he can't feed himself. He can't dress himself. He is in a cardiac chair. He can't toilet himself. So he pretty much needs assistance," Stankewitz said.

Those are all things Zach was able to do when, in 2019, he became a resident at the small group home in Kankakee run by a national for-profit company called Help at Home. Mickey said everything was fine until July 2021 when she got a call that Zach had been taken to the hospital.

"Then about an hour later, I got a call approximately about 10:30 AM. It was the hospital calling me to say that they're airlifting my son to a facility in Urbana because he has brain bleeds," Stankewitz said.

In addition to the head trauma, doctors in Urbana also found Zach had been badly beaten, with 39 different cuts or bruises across his body. Doctors notified Kankakee police, who began an investigation at the group home. During that investigation, an employee came forward with a horrifying video showing two of the group home's residents beating Zach with what appears to be pillows stuffed with a heavy object. Police say the video was taken and directed by 23-year-old Dayveon Rocquemore, a staff member who had been working at the facility for about a month.

Mickey described what she felt on seeing the video.

"I was – is he awake? Is he conscious of what's going on there? I was appalled, but then I got angry. How can somebody let this happen to him?" Stankewitz said.

Rocquemore has been charged with two counts of aggravated battery and is awaiting trial at the Kankakee County Jail. Police say Dayveon directed two of the home's other residents to beat Zach to discipline him while he shot it on his phone.

"It's a shocking example of neglect of a facility, of running a facility with this type of resident," said attorney Steve Levin, who on Wednesday filed a civil lawsuit in Cook County on behalf of Zach and his mom against Help at Home, Rocquemore, and several other employees of the facility.

The lawsuit alleges Rocquemore was never properly vetted or trained.

"Not only did they put an untrained individual who had no abilities to respond to Zach's behavior in place there, they also gave this individual, we believe, no training about Zach's particular behaviors," said Levin.

The Kankakee group home is now closed, but Help at Home continues to operate 190 group homes across a dozen states, including 45 here in Illinois.

"I don't want this happening to anybody else," said Mickey. "I don't want somebody else to go through what I'm currently going through."

Mickey said Zach's brain injuries are permanent and require 24/7 care. But she just wants him to have the best quality of life possible going forward while still demanding accountability.

"There seem to be too many unanswered questions as we look at things and delve deeper into stuff. More questions are coming up than answers. And we need to get to the truth to find out what really happened," Stankewitz said.

The two residents seen in the video beating Zach have not been charged because police said they are not mentally competent. A spokesperson for Help at Home said they cannot comment on the allegations because of the pending litigation.