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A preliminary report from Florida’s Department of Children and Families says they could not have prevented the tragic murders in Bell, Florida.  As Matt Galka tells us, DCF admits mistakes, but they haven’t been answering questions.

Don Spirit went on a rampage that left his six grandchildren and his daughter dead before he killed himself. Florida’s Department of Children and Families released a report Wednesday saying nothing could have predicted what happened, even though Spirit had a record marred with red flags.

We have reached out to DCF every day this week about the investigation. Through emais and through phone calls, but no one has gotten back to us.

The report admits that the department missed chronic issues with the family.  Meg Baldwin runs the Refuge House, a domestic violence help center.  She says it’s important to learn from the missteps.

“I hope hatever red flags we saw here or whatever different steps we might take in the future to prevent such a homicide, that we will do so,” said Baldwin.

The department did announce reforms ranging from retraining to additional reviews.  But Roy Miller with the Florida Children’s Campaign says it’s too little too late from the state agency.

“Case by case shouldn’t matter, we need more systemic reform. In the major urban areas, six of them, sheriff’s do the investigations, we ought to be going down that path,” said Miller.

The interim secretary for DCF announced he’ll be touring the all of the department’s regional facilities in the state starting next week. More than 250 new positions were added to the department this past legislative session.  37 of them will be used for an independent review system of open cases.