16-year-old Kayla Cuevas was found beaten and stabbed on Long Island last September
A $110 million lawsuit has been filed by the family of a New York high school student who was found beaten and stabbed to death in September 2016.
The mother of 16-year-old Kayla Cuevas filed the lawsuit on Monday against the Brentwood School District on Long Island.
Cuevas’ mother, Evelyn Rodriguez, claims in the lawsuit that the school ignored warnings MS-13 members were threatening her daughter who was later found dead alongside her best friend 15-year-old Nisa Mickens.
She had been attacked so severely with bats and machetes that her body was nearly unrecognizable.
‘They let my daughter into that environment with no protection. They told me my daughter was safe and she wasn’t,’ said Rodriguez to News 12.
Evelyn Rodriguez, whose 16-year-old daughter, Kayla Cuevas was killed in an MS-13 killing last September is now suing the school district her daughter attended
Best friends Nisa Mickens, right, and Kayla Cuevas, left, had been feuding with gang members on social media. Authorities said Mickens was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time
In the federal lawsuit, Rodriguez claims school officials ‘refused to take action to rectify the problem of bullying’ at the hands of known MS-13 members for two years.
Rodriguez says she and her daughter made repeated complaints about threats at the school to the dean, who said he would address the problem but didn’t.
‘They lied to me. They lied to my daughter,’ Rodriguez said.
In the days leading to Kayla’s murder, Rodriguez said school officials failed to intervene when another student threatened her daughter using throat-slicing gestures.
Evelyn Rodriguez, the mother of Kayla Cuevas, 16, has filed a $110 million lawsuit against the Brentwood Union Free School District
Rodriguez claims the district knew MS-13 gang members were harassing her daughter and threatened her life but did nothing about it
The court papers say the district was aware of the threats and were told by Cuevas and Rodriguez that the threats were captured on the school’s surveillance system. The documents state that the district did not inform law enforcement.
The court papers said that school employees including teachers assured Cuevas that this student — who is not named in the documents — would not be on school grounds, however on the first day of the 2016-17 school year, Cuevas encountered the student at Brentwood High School’s Ross Center.
Cuevas and her mother were assured that the student ‘was not and could not’ be on school grounds, according to the documents.
More than a half-dozen alleged MS-13 gang members were indicted in the killings of the teens
Kayla’s mother says she and her daughter made repeated complaints about threats at the school to the dean, who said he would address the problem but didn’t
Five days later, Cuevas was on school grounds when she was accosted by the student and gang members and ‘ultimately chased off school grounds and brutally murdered,’ the court papers state.
In the 15 months since the killing, more than a half-dozen alleged MS-13 gang members were indicted. Suspects in their killings were arrested in March.
Federal authorities have also arrested more than a half-dozen alleged members of MS-13 which has been blamed for 25 killings on Long Island since January 2016.
A spokesman for the Brentwood School District declined to comment.
According to NBC News, Rodriguez says that the school failed to act when told that the girl was being threatened.
The lawsuit states that bullying went on for two years before the teenager was killed.
MS-13 is blamed for 25 killings on Long Island since January 2016.
The murders, many of which have involved teenagers, have caught the attention of both President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, both of whom visited earlier this year to promise federal action to stem the violence.
A memorial pays tribute in Brentwood, Long Island to teenage victims Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens
School employees including teachers assured Cuevas that a student who was making threat, but is not named in court documents would not be on school grounds