布兰代斯大学学生非正常死亡 其家人起诉学校指控校园警察疏忽大意
【中美创新时报2024 年 10 月 31 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）去年 12 月，布兰代斯大学一名学生在改变自杀想法并大声呼救后死亡，其家人正在起诉学校和三名公共安全官员，指控他们几个小时没有正确回应路人的电话。《波士顿环球报》记者Danny McDonald 对此作了下述报道。
这起非正常死亡诉讼于周四在米德尔塞克斯高等法院提起，详细描述了 20 岁的德克萨斯州大二学生 Eli T. Stuart 的最后几个小时，他在 12 月初的一夜之间积极自杀，服用药丸，躺在校园里一块寒冷的地面上，然后决定他们想活下去。斯图尔特使用了他们/他们的代词。
但诉讼称，斯图尔特的尸体是在一名教授致电大学公共安全部门报告有人在树林里昏迷并倒在地上近 11 小时后被发现的。
“布兰迪斯大学及其安全办公室几乎在所有方面都辜负了伊莱·斯图尔特，”代表斯图尔特家人的律师霍华德·M·库珀说。“伊莱今天应该还活着。”
诉讼还称斯图尔特的手机录下了这名学生的求救声，但沃尔瑟姆的学校及其官员却让斯图尔特“孤独而痛苦地死去数小时，一边哭喊求救，一边明确表示他们不想死。”
布兰迪斯大学在周四的一份声明中没有直接回应斯图尔特家人的指控，而是说斯图尔特是“布兰迪斯社区深受爱戴的成员，他们的离去让校园里的人深感悲痛。”
学校还指出，它雇用了“每天为我们的学生提供支持的富有爱心、技术娴熟、忠诚的专业人员”，并“为社区所有成员提供多学科安全资源”。
诉讼将大学、两名大学警察和一名大学警察中尉侦探列为被告。
根据斯图尔特家人的诉讼，斯图尔特在高中期间一直与焦虑和抑郁作斗争，并有过自杀的想法，这些挣扎在布兰迪斯大学继续，斯图尔特是那里的神经科学专业学生。
自杀意念是美国青少年面临的一个主要心理健康挑战，近年来，全国各地的校园不得不越来越紧急地应对这一问题。根据美国自杀预防基金会的数据，每年约有 24,000 名大学生试图自杀，约有 1,100 名学生未能挺过危机，自杀是美国大学生死亡的第二大原因。
诉讼指出，2023 年秋天，斯图尔特经历了“日益加剧的焦虑”，在日记中，他们表示自己感到“过度焦虑”和“在学校里快要崩溃了”。起诉书称，由于抑郁，他们很难集中注意力。
起诉书称，12 月 4 日，斯图尔特决定自杀，因为他们认为自己考试不及格。起诉书称，他们第二天一早离开宿舍，并在某个时候服用了“各种处方药和非处方药”。
他们走到布兰迪斯大学校园三座教堂旁边的一排树下。
“伊莱给他们的亲人写了一系列短信，并在凌晨 5:29 开始录音，记录他们打算记录的他们死前那段时间，”起诉书写道。手机最终录音了 11 个多小时，记录了“伊莱最后清醒的时刻，甚至在他们停止说话后也记录了他们的呼吸声。”
诉讼称，录音显示斯图尔特改变了结束生命的想法。早上 8:30 刚过，斯图尔特开始大喊求救，大喊他们有麻烦了，无法移动，并请求学校学生运营的志愿紧急医疗服务提供帮助。
“在接下来的大约 48 分钟里，伊莱多次大喊，”起诉书写道。“他们最后一次求助发生在大约上午 9:17。”
诉讼称，12 月 5 日上午 9:10 前不久，一名教授打电话给校园警察，报告“有人躺在树林里”。教授报告说，这个人在动手，并指出那个地方“有点奇怪，不适合躺在那里”。
据诉讼称，负责当天白班的巡逻警官金伯利·卡特警官是诉讼中的被告之一，她告诉教授，部门会去看看，同时猜测这可能是一个无家可归的人。但诉讼称，尽管州法律要求卡特在调度日志中记录教授的报告，但她却没有这样做。
据诉讼称，她将电话告诉了同事、另一名被告托马斯·埃斯帕达警官，但他也没有记录。
诉讼称卡特未能及时回应报告，等了一个多小时才采取行动。
“如果她这样做了，她真的会听到伊莱的呼救声，”起诉书写道。
起诉书引用了大学的内部调查，声称视频显示，上午 10:15 后不久，卡特驾驶一辆警车驶过一条没有经过教授确定地点的道路。根据起诉书，卡特“从未下车，甚至没有停下她的车，只是沿着路开走。”
起诉书称，卡特随后向埃斯帕达报告说，树林里没有人。诉讼称，中午前不久，也就是卡特开车走错路后不到两个小时，斯图尔特的母亲爱丽丝打电话给布兰代斯警方，报告斯图尔特失踪。她告诉埃斯帕达，斯图尔特的室友联系了她，认为伊莱可能伤害了自己。
但诉讼称，埃斯帕达和卡特没有将母亲的电话与之前有人躺在树林里的报告联系起来，而且由于教授的报告没有记录，“寻找伊莱的人都不知道之前的那个电话。”
下午 1:40 左右，布兰代斯警方开始通过手机搜寻斯图尔特。下午 5 点左右，校园警察要求警犬协助搜查。诉讼称，晚上 8 点左右，一名州警在哈兰教堂附近的沼泽林区发现了斯图尔特的尸体，“距离树线几英尺，正是教授报告看到一个人躺在地上的地方”。斯图尔特于晚上 10:15 前不久在当地一家医院被宣布死亡。
诉讼称斯图尔特是残疾人和 LGBTQ+ 社区的倡导者。2020 年，斯图尔特在德克萨斯州议会大厦发表演讲，表达了“他们反对德克萨斯州行为健康执行委员会的规则改变，该改变允许社会工作者以残疾、性取向或性别认同为由拒绝客户”，诉讼称。
他们成立了一个残疾教育非营利组织，并作为原告提起了一项投诉，指控奥斯汀学区未能在 COVID-19 大流行期间对个性化教育计划进行联邦强制评估。
据诉讼称，在德克萨斯州，斯图尔特参与了一个青年剧团，并在犹太教堂的青年团董事会任职，“在 COVID 封锁期间，他为保持青年团的活跃发挥了重要作用”。
诉讼包括多项指控，包括非正常死亡和过失以及故意造成精神痛苦。原告正在寻求审判和赔偿，但更重要的是，斯图尔特的家人希望确保“任何大学校园都不会再发生这样的事情”，他们的律师库珀说。
“这里的各种失败只是一个接一个地被汇总起来，”他说。
题图：布兰代斯大学学生 Eli T. Stuart（右）及其兄弟姐妹。Stuart 家族
附原英文报道：
In wrongful death suit, family of Brandeis student sues school alleging negligence by campus police
By Danny McDonald Globe Staff,Updated October 31, 2024
The family of a Brandeis University student who died last December after changing their mind about taking their own life and crying out for help is suing the school and three public safety officers, alleging they did not properly respond to a call from a passerby for hours.
The wrongful death suit, filed Thursday in Middlesex Superior Court, details the final hours of Eli T. Stuart, a 20-year-old sophomore from Texas who was actively suicidal during an overnight period in early December, ingesting pills, and lying on a patch of frigid ground on campus before deciding they wanted to live. Stuart used they/them pronouns.
But Stuart’s body was found almost 11 hours after a professor called the university’s public safety force reporting someone was conscious and lying on the ground in a wooded area, according to the lawsuit.
“Brandeis University and its safety office failed Eli Stuart in almost every way possible,” said Howard M. Cooper, an attorney representing Stuart’s family. “Eli should be alive today.”
The lawsuit also alleged Stuart’s phone had recorded the student’s cries for help, but said the Waltham institution and its officers left Stuart to “die alone and in agony for hours while crying out for help and making clear they did not want to die.”
In a statement Thursday, Brandeis did not directly respond to the family’s allegations, saying instead that Stuart was “a beloved member of the Brandeis community and their loss was felt deeply on campus.”
The school also noted it employs “caring, skilled, and devoted professionals who support our students every day,” and makes “multi-disciplinary safety resources available to all members of the community.”
The suit names the university, two of its university police officers, and a university police lieutenant detective as defendants.
Stuart had struggled with anxiety and depression and experienced suicidal thoughts throughout high school, according to the family’s lawsuit, and those struggles continued at Brandeis, where Stuart was a neuroscience major.
Suicidal ideation is a major mental health challenge among American youth, one that campuses across the country have had to respond to with increasing urgency in recent years. Each year, about 24,000 college students attempt suicide, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and about 1,100 students do not survive their crisis, making suicide the second-leading cause of death among American college students.
The litigation notes that in fall of 2023, Stuart was experiencing “increasing anxiety,” reflecting in a journal they were feeling “overly anxious” and “drowning in school.” Focusing became difficult because of their depression, according to the complaint.
On Dec. 4, Stuart decided to die by suicide, after they believed they failed a test, according to the suit. They left their dorm early the next morning and at some point took “various prescription and over the counter medications,” according to the complaint.
They walked to a lines of trees next to the Three Chapels on Brandeis’s campus.
“Eli wrote a series of texts to their loved ones and, at 5:29 am, began to audio record what they intended to be the period of time prior to their death,” read the suit. The phone ended up recording for more than 11 hours, capturing “Eli’s last conscious hours as well as recorded their breath sounds even after they had stopped speaking.”
The recording shows that Stuart changed their mind about ending their life, according to the suit. Shortly after 8:30 a.m., Stuart begins to shout for help, yelling they are in trouble and cannot move, and pleading for aid from the school’s student-run volunteer emergency medical service.
“Eli cries out many times for approximately the next 48 minutes,” read the complaint. “Their last plea for help took place at approximately 9:17 am.”
The suit alleges that a professor called campus police shortly before 9:10 a.m. on Dec. 5 to report a “human being lying in the woods.” The professor reported the person was moving their hands and noted the location was “kind of a strange area to be lying in.”
Officer Kimberly Carter, a patrol officer in charge of the day shift that day and one of the defendants in the suit, told the professor the department would take a look, while speculating that it could have been a homeless person, according to the litigation. But Carter did not note the professor’s report in the dispatch log, despite being required by state law to do so, the suit alleges.
She told her colleague, Officer Thomas Espada, another defendant in the suit, about the call, but he didn’t log it either, according to the suit.
The suit alleges Carter failed to respond to the report in a timely manner, waiting more than an hour before taking any action.
“Had she done so, she literally would have heard Eli’s cries for help,” read the complaint.
The complaint cites the university’s internal investigation in asserting that video shows that shortly after 10:15 a.m., Carter drove a police car down a road that did not pass the location identified by the professor. Carter, according to the complaint, “never got out of or even stopped her car, instead merely driving down the road and then driving away.”
Carter then reported to Espada that there was no one lying in the woods, the complaint alleges. Shortly before noon, less than two hours after Carter drove down the wrong road, according to the suit, Stuart’s mother, Alice, called Brandeis police to report that Stuart was missing. She told Espada that Stuart’s roommate had contacted her and thought Eli might have harmed themselves.
But the suit alleges Espada and Carter failed to connect the mother’s call with the earlier report of someone lying in the woods, and because the professor’s report was not logged, “no one searching for Eli knew of that earlier call.”
At about 1:40 p.m., Brandeis police began searching for Stuart by pinging their cellphone. Around 5 p.m., campus police requested a police dog to help with the search. At about 8 p.m., a state trooper found Stuart’s body lying in the marshy, wooded area near the Harlan Chapel, “a few feet from the tree line, precisely where the Professor had reported seeing a human being lying on the ground,” the lawsuit alleges. Stuart was pronounced dead at a local hospital shortly before 10:15 p.m.
The suit describes Stuart as an advocate for people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ community. In 2020, Stuart spoke at the Texas State Capitol and voiced “their opposition to the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council’s rule change that allowed social workers to turn down clients on the basis of their disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity,” according to the litigation.
They founded a disability education nonprofit and were a plaintiff in a complaint that alleged the Austin School District failed to perform federally mandated assessments for individualized education plans amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Texas, Stuart was involved in a youth theater group, served on the board of their synagogue’s youth group and “were described as instrumental in keeping the youth group active throughout the COVID lockdown,” according to the suit.
The suit includes a number of counts, including ones charging wrongful death and negligent, as well as intentional, infliction of emotional distress. The plaintiffs are seeking a trial and damages, but moreover, Stuart’s family wants to ensure that “nothing like this ever happens again” on any college campus, said Cooper, their attorney.
“The various failures here were just compiled, one after another after another,” he said.
