A van driver and a matron pleaded guilty today in the pitiful, hyperthermia death of a mentally disabled man they had carelessly abandoned in a sweltering passenger van in East Harlem in 2011.
Manhattan prosecutors agreed to no-jail sentences, an outcome that only further troubled family members of tragic Lonnie Eason, 48.
“I think about him every day now,” Eason’s brother, Leroy Ialal Eason, 61, of Brooklyn, said after the plea.
“‘Til I come to my death, there is no way I can forget about any of this. It is impossible,” the brother said, quietly.
“It’s a little bit of closure,” he added. “I’d prefer them both to go to jail. But it wasn’t an intentional thing, so I have to go with what the DA recommended.”
Kurt Barry, the driver, and Akilah Toppin, the matron, had both been indicted on criminally negligent homicide for the Aug. 2 tragedy, in which Eason was left on the van from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on one of the hottest days of the year.
Toppin is now being held more responsible for the death, pleading guilty to the homicide felony. Barry pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of an incompetent or disabled person, a misdemeanor.
They will both be ordered to serve 50 hours community service when they are sentenced by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Jill Konvisor on April 2.
The two are not US citizens; As a newly-convicted felon, Toppin, especially, now faces deportation.
“You put your trust in these people as if they were family,” the brother said of the Association for the Help of Retarded Children, which ran the now-shuttered transportation program.
“Even my mother, who is a deeply religious person — no forgiveness whatsoever.”
Eason was a sweet, gentle man who weighed 210 pounds. He was non-verbal, communicating only with limited sign language, and grunts and moans.
The two left him inside a locked Econoline van, with closed windows, and with temperatures in the 90s.
“How could they miss him?” the still-grieving brother asked.
“How could they not count to six?” added the family’s civil lawyer, Robert Sharron. “Six people got on the bus, and only five got off.”
“Lonnie just did what anyone told him to do,” the lawyer said. “And he was told never leave the bus unless you’re with someone. Because you’ll get lost, and you won’t know what to do.
“And so he just waited for someone to get him.”
Eason’s family has sued the AHRC, the matron, and the van driver in Brooklyn Supreme Court; with today’s disposition, that lawsuit can now go forward, the family’s lawyer said.