TOLEDO — Lucas County Children Services and a Toledo group home face a new lawsuit over the death of De’Vonte Bailey, an 11-year-old boy who was struck by a car while riding his bicycle after leaving the home where he was living in county custody.
The suit names the county agency, Turning Point Residential Services, and Takeyla Brown, identified in the complaint as Turning Point’s owner-operator. It was filed by the law firm Nurenberg, Paris, Heller & McCarthy, and attorney Molly Ebraheim filed the complaint on the firm’s behalf.
According to the complaint, Bailey was living in the group home and was in the county’s custody, and he should have been supervised closely enough that he could not leave without an adult. Instead, the suit alleges, he got on a bicycle and rode away, and he was struck and killed in the dark nearly four miles from the group home.
The death occurred on Oct. 6, 2025, according to the firm’s account of the complaint. The distance Bailey traveled before he was struck is central to the case the plaintiffs are making: they argue that a properly supervised child would have been stopped long before he reached a roadway miles away at night.
The lawsuit alleges that Turning Point and Brown did not exercise reasonable care for Bailey’s safety and supervision. In announcing the filing, Ebraheim argued in substance that supervising the children in its care was the group home’s core responsibility, and that an 11-year-old should never have been able to walk out, take a bike, and ride miles away after dark without an adult.
The firm says the case is intended both to find out what happened inside the home that night and to prevent the same failure from happening to another child placed in county care. Children in group homes are there because a public agency has taken responsibility for their safety, which is why the supervision question sits at the center of the suit.
The claims in the complaint are allegations, not court findings. The county agency, the group home, and its owner-operator will have the opportunity to respond through the court process, and a judge will oversee how the case proceeds from here.
For Lucas County, the case is likely to focus attention on how group homes are monitored, how head counts and door supervision are handled overnight, and what checks are in place when a child in custody leaves a placement. Those questions now move into open court, where both sides will be required to support their accounts with evidence.
