Its been one year since a 16-year-old boy escaped from juvenile authorities and jumped off the Missouri River Bridge.
It was a full scale search and rescue operation boats and helicopters brought out. Dozens of police officers were on hand, all for an incident that should have never happened.
On May 14th 2010, Robert Nichols was just 16 years old. He was handcuffed and shackled to his ankles. He overpowered two juvenile authorities while riding in a car over the northbound bridge out of Jefferson City. When the car stopped, he jumped out and plunged more than 50 feet into the Missouri River.
Authorities searched for days while people wondered what went wrong. How was the teen not stopped?
At the time, Social Services said they would review transporation policies.
So one year later, what did that internal investigation find?
Over the past six months we've made numerous open records requests to the Department of Social Services only to be told that because Nichol's body has never been found they can't tell us anything about the investigation.
So we tried again, this time filing another request asking a general question about policy changes since the incident.
In response, Social Services finally admitted they have made no policy changes.
We wanted to give the Department of Social Servies a chance to talk about the investigation and tell us why no policy changes have been made but all of our requests for on camera interviews were declined. In an email they told us there is simply no new information.
But by not talking, it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Like, how they ensure this won't happen again? And whatever happened to the two employees involved? Were they disciplined? Eyewitnesses told us they sat in the car as he jumped off the bridge.
So what happens now? if they never find his body he'll be declared legally deceased after five years. At that time we'll ask again for the records.
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