Lawyers for a black teenager who was stabbed outside a Los Angeles high school filed a government claim against the school on Friday, alleging it failed to protect the boy from violent racist attacks.
On December 9, a stabbing outside Verdugo Hills High School in LA’s Sunland-Tujunga neighborhood led to two people being taken to a hospital, one of whom was in serious condition, while the other victim suffered injuries that were not believed to be life-threatening were. according to the police. One of the injured was a 14-year-old student whose lawyers and mother said he was attacked in a boys’ bathroom in August — an incident they say the school was aware of.
But the boy was arrested by the police after the stabbing. According to his lawyers, police took him into custody on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, but he is innocent and acted in self-defense. They plan to discuss the case with the LA County District Attorney’s Office in hopes that no charges will be filed. “He should never have gone through this,” said Brad Gage, one of his attorneys.
Gage said during the incident this month, the teen was chased by a group of other boys — one of them with a butcher knife in his hand — in a racially motivated attack. He said the other boys are Latino and that his 14-year-old client “was terrorized almost immediately when he started high school here.”
The newly filed claim, which is a precursor to a lawsuit, seeks damages estimated at $10 million.
Gage said the stabbing could have been prevented if the campus had taken disciplinary action following the August incident, when he said the teen was physically assaulted and made racist comments. The attorney released video of that earlier incident on Thursday.
“Under the education code, if a student is threatened, they are required to take immediate action,” Gage said. “They didn’t do that.”
He said the student’s mother met with Verdugo Hills High School officials in early September, and she expressed concern for her son’s safety, telling the school he had been threatened with stabbing or killing.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, which oversees the campus, declined to comment on the allegations Friday.
“Los Angeles Unified does not comment on current or ongoing litigation,” reads a statement from a district spokesperson.
The boy’s mother, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said the school had actually proposed transferring him without disciplining the other students involved. Given her concerns, she said she planned to, but not until he completed the current semester before winter break.
“So I said, ‘No, my son is staying here. He’s fine, he’s not going anywhere. He’s going to finish,'” she said. “That’s what I’m most angry about: they just sat there and didn’t do anything.”
It is not clear who the other students involved are, or whether they deny the charges, because minors cannot legally be identified by police.
But the teen’s mother claims he was attacked by other students and that the violence was racially motivated.
“We are the minority in this community, and my son has stated that he was targeted — clearly targeted,” she said. ‘He didn’t deserve that. He was just trying to go to school and get his education like everyone else.”
“I still feel like my son was in a situation where he could have been killed,” she said.
