The state has agreed to pay hundreds of thousand of dollars to settle a lawsuit filed in connection with the death of 4-year-old Zion McKeown, a known victim of child abuse who was killed after state Child Welfare Services staff returned him to his family.
Maryann Rooney, McKeown’s maternal grandmother, sued the state on behalf of the boy’s estate and his sister in 2014, and the case was settled for $875,000 after court-ordered mediation. State lawmakers are now being asked to approve the settlement.
In a 2012 interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Rooney said, “I want Child Welfare Services to admit they were wrong in giving this child back to his parents. They had a case 3-1/2 years ago, and they dropped the ball on it and he’s dead. I just want him to have some justice, to feel like somebody did something for him.”
Zion O’Neal Kingston McKeown was known to the state Child Welfare system because he was hospitalized on Oahu in 2008 with multiple cracked ribs before he was 4 months old. Tests administered by the hospital during that stay revealed the child also had older rib and collarbone fractures that were still healing.
According to testimony submitted to lawmakers by the state Attorney General’s Office this week, the boy’s parents had a history of mental illness, violence against family members and criminal convictions for violence.
McKeown’s mother, Angelique McKeown, already had lost her parental rights for her older daughter, and state officials temporarily removed the child from his home after he was hospitalized in 2008.
Both parents denied responsibility for his injuries, and authorities were unable to determine who had injured the child.
Rooney was given temporary custody of Zion McKeown in 2008 after his hospitalization, but had to give him up after she suffered a heart attack.
Although McKeown’s parents were “largely noncompliant” with court orders and services offered by Child Welfare staff working on his case, custody of the boy was eventually awarded to the mother, according to the attorney general’s testimony to lawmakers. The Family Court cases involving the child were terminated without further review.
In February 2010 the Child Welfare staff received an anonymous report that McKeown was being abused by his mother, and Child Welfare staff called the mother to offer services. However, no further action was taken by the state in connection with that report, according to the attorney general’s testimony.
In 2011, McKeown’s mother gave custody of him to his father, Kyle McKeown, on Maui, and there was no further monitoring of either parent by Child Welfare, according to the testimony.
On May 29, 2012, Kyle McKeown took Zion McKeown to Maui Memorial Medical Center and said the boy had been found unresponsive in the shower of their home. Emergency room doctors discovered the boy had suffered severe blunt force trauma to his internal organs, and he died about six hours later.
McKeown likely was stomped before his death, according to court records, and both Kyle McKeown and his girlfriend Grace Lee-Nakamoto were indicted in 2012 on second-
degree murder charges in connection with the boy’s death. Both are still awaiting trial, according to state court records.
Carl Varady, the lawyer who is representing Rooney, declined to comment on the case because the settlement has not yet received final approval from the state.
