A New Jersey public school district has been found not liable for the fatal shooting of a 10-year old boy at a high school football game where security did not include a metal detector to screen attendees.
The boy’s mother and estate sought to invoke the “state-created danger” theory to hold the Pleasantville Board of Education (PBOE) civilly liable for violating the boy’s rights under the New Jersey Civil Rights Act and Constit
ution by not protecting him. They alleged that the PBOE and school officials were negligent in their security in what was acknowledged to be a high crime area.
New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, ruled this week that the school board could not be held liable because it could not have foreseen the shooting and had not done anything to create the danger but had in fact taken steps to increase security.
The appeals court held that PBOE was entitled to summary judgment, reversing a lower court’s denial of summary judgment.
While he was attending the Pleasantville High game against Camden High with his mother and sister, Micah Tennant-Dunmore was killed by a stray bullet that was intended for another person. The shooter was seeking revenge for a shooting that took place 18 days earlier about seven miles away in Atlantic City.
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PBOE officials argued in their defense that this was a random shooting and they could not have been aware of the likelihood that the shooter would enter the football field to exact vengeance regarding a completely unrelated shooting almost three weeks earlier in another city.
While PBOE did not have metal detectors, it did have a security plan for the football game. The plan increased the normal assignment of three armed police officers to 10, positioned around the perimeter of the football field. They were
assisted by a K-9 unit. Additionally, seven event staff were positioned in the parking lot, entrance, end zone and concession stand. Attendees were only permitted to bring in a bag no larger than the size of a small purse.
The “state-created danger” theory under which Micah’s mother and estate asserted a direct entity claim against PBOE presents a high bar for plaintiffs, one the New Jersey Supreme Court has addressed only once. In a 2014 case (Gormle
y v. Wood-El), the state’s high court relied on a 2006 Third Circuit case (Bright v. Westmoreland County), which set forth four factors necessary to establish state-created danger. These are that the harm caused was foreseeable and fairly direct; a state actor acted with a degree of culpability that “shoc
ks the conscience”; the plaintiff was a foreseeable victim of the defendant’s acts; and a state actor affirmatively used his or her authority in a way that created a danger.