Investigators will test DNA found on a wipe removed from a care home choking victim’s throat

The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office plans to test DNA from a hair found on a wipe that was pulled from the throat of a woman who lived at a care home for people with developmental difficulties.

The testing is part of a renewed criminal investigation into Cheryl Yewdall’s choking death in Philadelphia nearly three years ago, according to court documents filed Thursday.

Staff discovered Yewdall lying face down on the floor with blue lips and in a pool of urine. She was taken to a hospital but died five days later. The medical examiner’s office said it couldn’t determine how the 7-by-10-inch (18-by-25-centimeter) wipe got into her airway, leaving unresolved whether the 50-year-old’s death on Jan. 31, 2022, was accidental or a homicide. No charges have been filed.

Yewdall’s family have been seeking answers to what befell her, and they welcomed the developments.

“Cheryl’s mom is very happy that the attorney general’s office has taken this further necessary step to find out what happened to her daughter at Merakey. She wants — and deserves — answers,” family attorney James Pepper said.

A $15 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by Yewdall’s mother casts suspicion on an unidentified staff member at the Merakey Woodhaven facility in Philadelphia. Attorneys for the family recently asked a judge to order DNA testing on a strand of hair that was stuck to the corner of the wipe — a potentially important piece of evidence missed by city homicide investigators. A pathologist for the family detected the hair by magnifying police evidence photos of the wipe.

After being served with a subpoena, the city agreed to send the wipe and hair to a laboratory of the family’s choosing. Instead, the state attorney general’s office stepped in and took control of the evidence, just three months after the family’s lawyers said in court documents that state and city investigators had seemed unwilling to perform any such DNA testing.

“I recently learned that the Attorney General is proceeding with DNA testing the hair in question under the umbrella of their criminal investigation duties,” Philadelphia’s deputy city solicitor, Andrew Pomager, wrote to Pepper on Wednesday. “I cannot interfere with the criminal investigation of this evidence, so will not be proceeding with the plan” to send it to the family’s lab.

On Thursday, Pepper withdrew his motion to compel production of the wipe and hair, attaching Pomager’s letter to his legal filing. Pepper cited the “pending criminal investigation” as the reason for dropping his demand for private DNA testing.

The attorney general’s office said through a spokesperson that it would “neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”

Merakey, a large provider of developmental, behavioral health and education services with more than 8,000 employees in a dozen states, has denied any wrongdoing in Yewdall’s death. The company calls suggestions that one of its employees might have killed Yewdall by jamming a wad of paper down her throat “patently false.”

In a legal filing this week, Merakey’s lawyers contended that the wipe pulled from Yewdall’s windpipe is not used in the Woodhaven facility. They suggested that emergency medical technicians who rushed Yewdall to the hospital were to blame, noting COVID-19 protocols at the time required medical providers to “take additional steps for sanitation.”

“At no time did any employee of Merakey intentionally try to cause harm to Cheryl Yewdall,” the lawyers wrote. “Further, it is the position of Merakey this wipe did not get placed in Cheryl Yewdall’s mouth during involvement with Merakey employees and is believed to have come from after she left the facility.”

Yewdall’s lawyers said their expert will testify that the wipe was present when EMTs arrived on the scene, and that someone had jammed it down her throat.

“It is clear this wipe was forced into Cheryl’s throat by an employee at Merakey,” Pepper and another lawyer, Joseph Cullen Jr., wrote in a legal filing last week.

A trial in the wrongful death suit is scheduled for next year.

Yewdall, who had cerebral palsy and serious intellectual disabilities, lived at Woodhaven for four decades. Evidence previously uncovered by the family shows that Yewdall suffered a broken leg that went undiagnosed, and had other injuries at Woodhaven in the year leading up to her death. In last week’s court filing, the plaintiffs revealed a doctor’s hand-drawn image of Yewdall that showed her with a black eye and facial bruising and swelling months before her death. Merakey said it happened in a fall.

Yewdall, who had limited verbal skills, often repeated words and phrases she heard other people say, a condition called echolalia. In a conversation recorded by Yewdall’s sister, the family’s 2022 lawsuit notes, Yewdall blurted out: “Listen to me, a———. Settle down baby. I’m going to kill you if you don’t settle down. I’m going to kill you, a———.”

Pepper has said Yewdall’s outburst implied she had heard those threats at Woodhaven.

Merakey, based in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, plans to close Woodhaven in January and relocate dozens of residents to smaller community-based homes. It has said the closure is in line with state policy and a long-term national shift away from larger institutions.