Nearly six months after it was sued over a young girl’s fatal fall from one of its school buses, the Galveston Independent School District filed an original answer in the litigation.
Darrell Thomas sued GISD in the Galveston County 56th District Court last Feb. 9, alleging his daughter was assaulted by other students on the bus in question prior to her fall.
The lawsuit asserts that “suffered significant injuries, emotional distress, and, ultimately, death” as a result of the Nov. 27, 2015 incident, and her father eventually “learned that multiple assaults occurred for several days consecutively without any report to administration until this last deadly incident.”
GISD’s answer, which was filed July 20, faults Thomas’ daughter for the subject event.
According to the three-page document: “This plaintiff knowingly and intentionally opened the rear emergency door to the bus she was riding in and stepped or jumped onto the highway sustaining severe injuries that ultimately led to her death two days later.”
Attorney Isidro O. Castanon of the law firm Allen, Stein & Durbin, P.C. in Palacios serves as the defendant’s lead counsel.
Galveston County 56th District Court Case No. 16-CV-0175