Student Who Was Stabbed at School Sues the District

A 17-year-old Edison High School student who was stabbed during a March attack by four strangers in the school parking lot has sued the Huntington Beach Union High School District, claiming the district negligently failed to protect him.

Dean J. Navarro, who was a junior at the time of the attack, claimed in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court that he was severely wounded, “permanently maimed, scarred and left crippled” during the allegedly unprovoked March 17 attack.

Other defendants in the lawsuit include Edison High, three of the suspected attackers--Minh Van Nguyen, 19, and Khai Quang Do, 20, both of Westminster, and Antoine Quan Nguyen, 22, of Anaheim--and other unnamed defendants.

The three men and an unidentified 15-year-old boy from Garden Grove were arrested by police immediately after the attack.

According to police, Navarro was walking with a friend through the lot when he was challenged by four young males in a parked car.

The occupants allegedly accused Navarro of “mad-dogging” them, or attempting to stare them down. A challenge was issued, and the four people in the car got out and attacked Navarro, who tried to fight back.

Navarro was stabbed several times, receiving wounds to his arm and abdomen.

The lawsuit was filed after the high school district rejected Navarro’s claim for damages. The lawsuit alleges that the district and school are liable because they are charged with the duty of monitoring activities at Edison High’s parking lot and owed a “degree of care” to the plaintiff as he walked to his car.

The lawsuit says that Navarro suffered physical and mental pain, including severe emotional distress. In addition, he incurred medical expenses and lost time in school during his recuperation, it said.

Navarro and his attorney, Joseph G. Cavallo, could not be reached for comment Thursday evening. School district officials and school board members also were not available for comment.

Navarro’s lawsuit claimed that one of the attackers drew a knife and stabbed him repeatedly in the abdomen and arm, after they had threatened to kill him.

Their conduct “was willful, despicable and malicious,” the lawsuit claims.

Antoine Quan Nguyen has been charged by prosecutors with attempted murder and inflicting great bodily injury. At the time of the arrest, Nguyen was on parole from a 1992 sentence for second-degree burglary in Los Angeles.

Minh Van Nguyen and Khai Quang Do were charged with assault with a deadly weapon. None of the four has come to trial.

The attack was one of several violent incidents during the school year. A week before the attack at Edison, 22 Fountain Valley High School students were suspended after a student was stabbed during a campus melee sparked by tensions between white and Asian-American students.

In addition, violence erupted at or near schools in Anaheim, Fountain Valley, Lake Forest, Irvine and Santa Ana during the past school year.