LA GRANGE, IL – Lyons Township High School is defending itself against a lawsuit in an incident that left a student severely injured outside North Campus in May 2023.
Filed in December, the lawsuit specifically names former Assistant Principal Darrell Mathis Jr. as a defendant.
In July 2023, Mathis left after four years to become athletic director at Maine West High School in Des Plaines. He could not be reached for comment.
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The plaintiffs are two students and their mothers.
According to the lawsuit, the two students were being subjected to insults based on their personal appearance for some time. The school and specifically Mathis should have known of this, it said.
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On April 28, 2023, both of the students were bullied and physically attacked by other high school students and a former student at a playground next to the school.
On May 1, 2023, the two students were involved in a fight with another student in the locker room at the school, the lawsuit said.
Mathis learned of the incident in the locker room and met with those involved, the plaintiffs said. He told one of the mothers that he would personally escort her son to the school bus to ensure his safety, but he did not keep his promise, the lawsuit said.
Mathis, instead, released the student to the care of someone else, the lawsuit said. (Patch obtained the lawsuit from the school, which blacked out the names of everyone involved but Mathis.)
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The students were said to have left through Exit 7 after school. That was where the incident – which the plaintiffs referred to as an attack – took place that resulted in a student being severely injured.
In the lawsuit, the lawyers said Mathis “consciously disregarded” the students’ safety when he failed to take any remedial action required by the student handbook.
In response, the school’s lawyers at the Tressler law firm are asking Cook County Circuit Court to throw out much of the lawsuit. They said the plaintiffs provided no information to show that the school or Mathis consciously disregarded students’ safety.
The families, the attorneys said, vaguely mentioned a fight at a playground and a locker room incident. It provided no evidence indicating the defendants should have been aware of the “unsupported allegations of bullying.”
In a statement Monday, the school said, “We understand that the student incident that occurred on May 1, 2023 proved to be a challenging time for our school community, including the students and families directly involved. Since the incident, the District has been involved in pending litigation and will continue to remain respectful of individuals’ privacy, pursuant to student and minor privacy rights.”
The school said it is committed to supporting staff and the community as it prioritizes safety. It referred to its webpage about the topic.
La Grange police have released little about the May 1, 2023, incident outside the school, saying state law restricts it from doing so because the matter involves juveniles. (Patch has shown that other towns reveal more details than La Grange about incidents involving youths.)
In the days after the incident, La Grange police arrested a juvenile on charges of attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery. They did not give the youth’s age, gender, hometown or whether the juvenile was a student.
Around the same time, student James Hernandez, 18, of Brookfield, was charged with battery in the incident.
In the lawsuit, the families are being represented by attorneys Sam Adam Jr. and Lee DiBiasio. They could not be reached for immediate comment.
In 2022, the high school paid out $140,000 in a settlement with the family of a 14-year-old girl who was seen in a video being pummeled by a 16-year-old girl in a hallway at South Campus.
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