A former student at El Roble Intermediate School has sued the Claremont Unified School District, alleging the district didn’t protect him before or after the student was physically assaulted on campus by a bullying classmate.
According to a complaint filed September 11, 2023 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the student was attacked and bullied three different times earlier this year.
The complaint alleges the district and El Roble Intermediate School staff knew about the student’s attacker’s history of violence, outbursts and physical threats — including stealing the student's shoes and telling the student “he should die.”
On May 23, 2023 the same bully informed his classmates that a pre-planned physical assault on the student would take place that day and they should watch and record the fight on their mobile devices. The student experienced two more verbal and physical assaults on campus days later, prompting the student’s parents to remove him from school, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint alleges that El Roble Intermediate School has ongoing issues with students fighting on campus, particularly pre-planned physical assaults that are instigated by a baseless rumor started by a peer.
As history has shown, the bully will only feel emboldened to escalate the gravity of his acts and the parents that once trusted the school will be left worrying about what may happen next, as no parent wants to be on the receiving end of the phone call that this student's mother received, or worst, like the parent of Diego Stolz, a student who was fatally beaten to death by bullies in 2019 in Moreno Valley.
This lawsuit against El Roble was filed only days after the family of Stolz — who was bullied, beaten and fatally injured in an attack by classmates — reached a $27-million settlement with the Moreno Valley Unified School District.