Trustees Reject Claim of Strip-Searched Boy
School trustees have rejected a claim from a student who was strip-searched by school employees looking for a teacher’s missing money.
The school board voted unanimously at its Feb. 1 meeting not to pay the claim by Jibril Andrews, one of the students on a Dec. 15, 1993, field trip to the Galleria at South Bay, said Assistant Supt. John Vinke.
The claim listed medical damages as “unknown” but asked for $250,000 for general damages, Vinke said.
The seventh-graders from Will Rogers Intermediate School visited the mall as part of a consumer math lesson. When a teacher complained that she was missing $400, a male teacher’s aide searched the boys and a female aide searched the girls.
If a lawsuit is filed, the district will refer the matter to its insurance carrier, Vinke said.
John J. Hyland IV, the boy’s attorney, said he hopes the matter can be settled without going to court. “For the children’s sake that’s probably not the best thing,” Hyland said.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Monica Blodgett said three weeks ago that her office decided against filing criminal charges against the aides, saying that the aides exercised “extremely poor judgment” in conducting the search, but did not inflict mental suffering sufficient to warrant criminal charges.
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