Family of Vallejo student dragged by teacher settles lawsuit for $200K

VALLEJO – The family of a middle school student who was dragged out of a Vallejo classroom by a substitute teacher in 2024 accepted a $200,000 settlement offer last month from Elite Public Schools and a school staffing agency.

Another student recorded a video of the incident which was broadcast on KTVU. The teacher was identified as 41-year-old Noah Dove.

Dove had a history of allegations of misconduct around children and the lawsuit alleged that Elite had been warned about Dove’s propensity for violence. 

According to the lawsuit, Dove, who is 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 200 pounds, had become angry when the student, who was 13 years old at the time, used her cellphone to obtain a login code for an exam she was about to take on a school computer. 

When Dove, visibly upset, stood behind the student she tried to explain why she was using the phone. But Dove grabbed her jacket, pulled her to the floor and then began dragging her by her heels toward the entrance to the classroom, according to the lawsuit. 

The lawsuit argued that Scoot Education, the staffing agency that arranged for Dove’s employment, failed to conduct an adequate background investigation before hiring him. 

“Scoot did no investigation, because if they would have looked, they would have realized that he had a restraining order against him for harming a child,” the family’s attorney Daniel Russo said in an interview. “And then the DA’s office dropped the ball completely and never prosecuted this jerkoff.” 

Vallejo parent Robin Horca accused Dove of abusing her daughter several times over a period of a year in 2019 when the six-year-old was on play dates with Dove’s daughter at the family’s home. Horca reported the incidents to police but the Solano County District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute because the main evidence in the case was the daughter's account. Dove denied the allegations. 

Horca filed a request for civil restraining order based on the allegations of abuse and an encounter with Dove in which she alleged that he had behaved aggressively toward her and her daughter. The court granted the order in February 2020 and those records were publicly available before Dove was hired by Scoot.

Then in late February or March 2024, two adult “yard monitors” at Vallejo Charter School observed Dove pulling a six-year-old student by the arm so forcefully that her feet were lifted up off the ground, one of the monitors told the Vallejo Sun. 

The two yard monitors formally reported the incident and said that Dove was told that he could no longer work at the school.

According to Russo, one of the monitors who witnessed the incident was also a parent of a student at Elite. When she learned that Dove had been hired at her child’s school she immediately notified officials at Elite about Dove’s behavior at Vallejo Charter School. Elite continued to employ Dove and weeks later he dragged the student from a classroom. 

The family’s lawsuit argued that Elite failed to take action to protect the student from foreseeable harm and that Scoot Education was negligent in performing their duty to conduct thorough background checks to ensure the safety of students. 

Russo said he felt confident that they would have prevailed at trial but they decided to resolve the case through a mediation process and avoid costly litigation that could have stretched on for years. Talking about the incident also required the student to revisit the trauma so a faster resolution was a better option for the family, he said.

In mediation, Elite offered a settlement amount of $115,000 and Scoot Education offered $85,000, according to court documents.

The lawsuit also named Solano County and the county Department of Education as defendants due to the county’s oversight of Elite Public Schools’ charter. But the family dismissed the agency and the county as defendants in the case, according to court documents.

Dove was also a defendant in the lawsuit, but, according to Russo, he avoided their attempts to serve him with a court summons. The family published the summons in the Vallejo Times-Herald but Russo said Dove never responded or showed up to court.

Russo said that unfortunately the settlement involved dismissing claims against Dove as well. “There’s no personal consequence and he’ll probably go to work for another school district and beat some other kid, it’s insane and irrational,” Russo said.

The Vallejo law office Maas & Russo is expected to receive $50,000 from the settlement for Russo’s fees as the family’s attorney. Other litigation expenses totalling nearly $13,000, that include private investigation costs and filing fees will also come out of the settlement, according to court documents.

The remaining balance of about $137,000 will be held in an account until the student turns 18. Russo said that the student’s mother is a single parent and they are working with the court to see if they will release some of the funds so the family can purchase a vehicle. Otherwise the student plans to use the money to pay for her college education, Russo said.