16-year-old dies at St. Charles juvenile center

Multiple agencies are involved in the investigation of the early Tuesday morning death of a 16-year-old boy at the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles.

Kane County Coroner Chuck West said his office was contacted at 3 a.m. about an incident that had occurred there.

West, reached at home Tuesday evening, said he could not yet comment on how the boy might have died.

"All the reports aren't in from the various groups involved. There's some discrepancy on who's in charge," he said. "At this point, we're just taking it one step at a time."

Along with the coroner's office, State Police, the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, the state Department of Corrections, and Bobby Moore, the director of the St. Charles facility, are all involved in the investigation, Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice spokeswoman Januari Smith said.

Like West, Smith also declined to offer details on the boy's death.

Smith said that to her knowledge, security has not been an issue at the medium-security facility for males under the age of 18.

Located on Lincoln Highway, the average population of the facility is about 330 inmates, according to the Center's Web site. Offenders of all classes of crimes are jailed there.

The center is more than 100 years old, but received about $34 million of renovations back in 2003 and 2004. However, it was during that same time that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich first proposed the idea of closing the facility. The center remained open, but experienced staffing and budget cuts that sparked protests by the employees last year who said the new staffing and discipline procedures were creating a "deteriorating security situation."

In March 2007, Youth Center employees held a news conference to call attention to state budget cuts they said created a "deteriorating security situation" at their facility. Union representatives said then that there had been hundreds of incidents, with inmates assaulting not only one another, but also their supervisors.

An autopsy will take place Wednesday morning.