Mary C. Snow Elementary School in Charleston, W.Va.
CHARLESTON – The parents of an autistic child have sued the Kanawha County school board after she exited the school building, crossed a busy Charleston intersection and ran along the banks of the Kanawha River.
Marie Tuttle and Mark Thompson, as parents of N.T., filed their complaint September 16 in Kanawha Circuit Court against the Kanawha County Board of Education and a Jane Doe employee of Mary C. Snow Elementary School.
Cary
“Here we go again,” attorney Michael Cary told The West Virginia Record. “How many more times do our children have to suffer before Kanawha County finally steps up to protect them?
“Families deserve transparency, and the community deserves accountability.”
Cary has represented several families in similar lawsuits recently against public schools and private daycare facilities.
According to the complaint, N.T. is autistic, non-verbal and requires assistant with basic daily activities. She was in the special education class at the school.
On September 3, Tuttle says she was notified of a “serious event” involving her daughter. The text message from Ms. Jenami, the special education teacher, said, “Incident with N----- will call very soon.”
“This brief and vague notification failed to convey the gravity of what had actually occurred and left plaintiff with no immediate understanding of the dangers her child had just faced,” the complaint states. “Instead of being provided with prompt and detailed communication about the emergency, plaintiff was left in a state of confusion and alarm, awaiting further explanation about an incident that ultimately revealed severe lapses in supervision and care for her child.”
The complaint says N.T. had been placed in the art classroom under the supervision of the unnamed defendant. Despite N.T.’s well-documented history of elopement behaviors, she was not adequately monitored or supervised and was able to leave the classroom unnoticed, exit the school building and ultimately make her way off school property without detection, even slipping past a fence around the school.
“She crossed a heavily trafficked intersection with cars speeding by in every direction, placing her life at immediate risk of being struck,” the complaint states. “Still unnoticed by the school, she continued on, running along the banks of the Kanawha River. There, just steps from the water’s edge, she was left exposed to yet another life-threatening hazard.
“Each failure compounded the next: the lack of classroom supervision, the failure to secure the grounds and the absence of any emergency response allowed a special-needs child to move from one peril to another until she was literally inches away from drowning.”
The complaint says a City of Charleston employee happened to find N.T. alone along the riverbank.
“The school had no idea she was missing,” the complaint states. “There were no alarms, no staff searching, no awareness whatsoever that this vulnerable child had slipped away under their watch. It took the intervention of a complete stranger, someone with no responsibility for her care, to recognize the peril and call emergency services.”
The plaintiffs accuse the defendants of unlawful disability discrimination in violation of the West Virginia Human Rights Act and negligence as well as negligent hiring, supervision and retention.
They seek compensatory damages for permanent psychological injuries, pain and suffering, emotional and mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, indignity, embarrassment, humiliation, annoyance, shame, inconvenience and other damages. They also seek punitive damages, pre- and post-judgment interests, court costs, attorney fees and other relief.
The plaintiffs are being represented by Cary of Cary Law Office in Charleston. The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number 25-C-1092
