Estates Of Two 12/14 Victims: Insufficient Security In Place
NOTE: This is an expanded version of a story filed by Reporter Andrew Gorosko on Monday, January 12, 2015.
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DANBURY — The estates of two of the 20 first grade students who were killed in the December 14, 2012, shooting incident at Sandy Hook Elementary School are the plaintiffs in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the town, which is seeking money damages.
The lawsuit alleges there was insufficient security in place in the school and its grounds, allowing the shooter to forcibly enter the building and then enter two classrooms and shoot and kill people within those classrooms.
The civil action is dated December 12, 2014, on court papers. The case was stamped as received by Town Clerk Debbie Aurelia Halstead on January 9.
The lawsuit, which is filed in Danbury Superior Court, seeks unspecified money damages exceeding $15,000. The court return date is January 27.
Listed as plaintiffs in the suit are the estates of Noah Pozner and Jesse Lewis, both of whom were among the 26 people killed by gunman Adam Lanza, 20, within the school. Lanza killed 20 first graders and six educators, before killing himself.
Representing the Jesse Lewis estate are his mother Scarlett Lewis and father Neil Heslin.
Representing the Noah Pozner estate is his father Leonard Pozner.
Named as defendants in the legal action are the Town of Newtown, represented by Ms Halstead; the Board of Education, represented by Schools Superintendent Joseph V. Erardi, Jr; and Sandy Hook Elementary School, represented by Principal Kathleen Gombos.
The lawsuit erroneously names the school principal as Sandy Gombos. The text of the lawsuit also erroneously names the school superintendent as David Fleishman. A man by that name is the superintendent of schools for the City of Newton, Mass.
Newtown Town Attorney David Grogins responded to the lawsuit saying, “We’re not going to make any comment yet.”
Mr Grogins said he expects he would have comments on the case at some point in the future.
“We’re reviewing it,” he added.
The 66-page lawsuit lists a variety of reasons why the plaintiffs consider the school system to have been negligent on December 14, 2012, resulting in the many deaths there.
The various allegations focus on the school system’s not having sufficient security measures in place to prevent the deaths at the K-4 school at 12 Dickinson Drive.
According to the lawsuit, school officials failed to provide the school with classroom doors that could be locked from the inside, thereby making the “lockdown” aspect of that school’s safety procedures virtually impossible to follow.
The lawsuit also alleges that school officials failed to sufficiently train and supervise the staff on the proper way to implement lockdown and evacuation plans.
Also, classrooms in the school could only be locked from the outside with a key, in violation of state law, it alleges.
The lawsuit also states, “They failed to provide a security guard or any other type of law enforcement personnel to assist in the implementation of the policies and procedures should an intruder enter the building, while leaving a large enough non-safety glass window directly to the right of the locked outer doors of the school, making access to the building relatively simple, and [making] successful lockdown of the building virtually impossible.”
The lawsuit alleges that having a 12-square-foot conventional glass panel in place adjacent to the locked main doors essentially rendered the locking of those doors useless, in terms of keeping someone from forcibly entering the building.
Lanza used a powerful semiautomatic rifle to shoot his way through the glass panel adjacent to the locked main doors to get inside the school.
A teacher in one of the two classrooms where the students were killed was a substitute teacher who was unfamiliar with school security measures, the lawsuit alleges.
Representing the plaintiffs is the law firm Papcsy Janosov Roche, LLC, of Norwalk.
Besides the town attorney, the town has referred the lawsuit to its insurance firm Rose & Kiernan, Inc, of Danbury, among others, for review.
Also, the estates of Noah Pozner and Jesse Lewis are among the ten plaintiffs in another pending negligence and wrongful death lawsuit in state court which focuses on the rifle which was used in the shootings. The eight other plaintiffs are the estates of seven other people who were killed and one survivor of the incident.
The defendants in that case are the manufacturer, the distributor, and the seller of the semiautomatic Bushmaster AR-15 rifle, which Adam Lanza used in the murders. Through that lawsuit, the plaintiffs seek money damages.