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The parents of a 14-year-old Cleveland girlabducted on her way to school, then raped, tortured and murdered, allege the school is at fault for not alerting them about her absence, wasting hours that might have been used to search for her.
The school system “utterly and without question breached a critical duty owed to each and every parent to provide notice of a missing child—no text messages, phone calls, emails or any other form of communication,” the lawsuit alleges.
Alianna’s killer, Christopher Whitaker, is in prison after beingconvicted and sentencedin March 2018 to die for his crimes.
Cleveland Police Department
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It alleges that on the day Alianna was abducted, her mother had no knowledge of her daughter’s absence from school until 4 p.m., when she called E Prep and was told Alianna had not arrived that morning and was absent all day.
Had her parents been alerted sooner, they might have acted to help locate Alianna before she was raped, tortured and killed, alleges the lawsuit, which seeks $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
The parents organization Friends of Breakthrough Schools responded with a statement, saying, “We cannot comment on pending litigation at this time other than to say, Alianna’s death was a terrible loss to our entire school community and we have tried to stay in touch with the parents and be supportive to the parents along the way,” reportsNews5 Cleveland.
The City of Cleveland, through a spokesman for the mayor’s office, declined to comment on a pending lawsuit.
The case sparked Ohio lawmakers to pass a new statute, effective in April, that requires schools to call parents within two hours of the start of a school day if a child is marked absent without prior parental notice, reportsFox8 Cleveland.
In addition to his death sentence for murder, Whitaker received an additional 48-year sentence for his convictions of aggravated burglary, rape, felonious assault, obstruction of justice and gross abuse of a corpse in connection with Alianna’s killing.
To honor the girl’s memory, her family created theAlianna DeFreeze Let’s Make a Changefoundation, a non-profit organization to help low-income families.
source: people.com
