Vallejo school district settles lawsuit over the death of special needs student for $5M

VALLEJO – The Vallejo City Unified School District agreed to pay $5 million to settle a lawsuit from the family of a special needs student who was allowed to wander off unsupervised and suffered a series of seizures that led to his death two years ago.

The lawsuit was filed last year and the district denied any wrongdoing. It alleges that 17-year-old Kevon DeLeon, who was in the special education program at Everest Academy because of his cognitive disabilities and epilepsy, arrived at Everest safely on the school bus on Sept. 22, 2021, but wandered away unnoticed by school staff.

When staff members realized he was gone, they began a search and notified Vallejo police. By the time police found DeLeon, he was already suffering from multiple seizures and he was rushed to the hospital.  

The epileptic seizures that DeLeon suffers from require immediate medical treatment to prevent brain injury and other life-threatening complications. DeLeon requires supervision so that he can be treated as soon as possible if he experiences a seizure.

Attorneys for the DeLeon family alleged that the delay in treatment diminished his chance of survival.

At the hospital, DeLeon’s condition deteriorated to respiratory failure and he required 19 minutes of CPR for cardiac arrest. He died from multiple organ failure three days after arriving at the hospital.

DeLeon was on an Individualized Education Plan that called for special needs transport and supervision from the time he was picked up by the bus to the time he was dropped off at home.  The lawsuit states that school staff were aware of DeLeon’s medical issues and supervisory needs.

Although the school district has policies in place to prevent students from leaving, the lawsuit alleges that the district failed to provide adequate supervision during the times that DeLeon was in their care. Attorneys for the family further alleged that the district did not have knowledgeable and appropriately trained staff implementing the education plan.

Brian Henderson, one of the attorneys for the DeLeon family, said in an interview that DeLeon was unsupervised for between two-and-a-half to three hours but he had actually left campus because he was being bullied.

“Bullying happens when there is a lack of supervision,” Harrison said. So not only was DeLeon unsupervised when he left school, but there was no one looking after him to stop the bullying when he was still at school, he said.

Harrison is also suing the school district in a separate case on behalf of the family of a teen girl who killed herself and alleges that the district allowed her to be bullied.

A press release from attorneys for DeLeon’s father and grandmother, who brought the suit, stated that the family’s wish is for the district to examine the procedures and policies for the care of all children so that other parents’ nightmares do not become a reality.  

Henderson said that the case was particularly important to him because he is a Vallejo native and his father is a retired special education teacher that worked for the Vallejo school district at Bethel High School.

“It is my sincere hope,” Henderson said, “that this legal process has opened the eyes of the administrators and staff of VCUSD to the shortcomings of their procedures and that changes will be made to the benefit of all the children of Vallejo and the parents and families who love them.”

School district spokesperson Celina Baguiao said in an email that since the incident, the district has reviewed its policies and instituted a number of enhancements and changes.

Across the district those changes include a mandate for para-educators to maintain line of sight with students and a renewed focus on site safety and emergency plans. She said that at Everest Academy, the district designated a dedicated administrator and site safety supervisor to oversee safety measures. At John Finney Education Complex, the district upgraded fencing and other security equipment to create a single entry point.