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Denver Public Schools has asked a federal court to dismiss two separate lawsuits filed by former deans at East High School who were shot and injured by a student two years ago.
The lawsuits filed by Eric Sinclair and Wayne Mason provide more details about the March 2023 shooting and about the shooter, a 17-year-old student who later took his own life. The lawsuits also slam the school district for what they claim was a preventable tragedy.
“The District’s and the Board’s systemic failures created a dangerous situation where it was not only foreseeable, but almost inevitable that at some point a student would shoot a member of East High School’s faculty or staff,” one lawsuit says.
But in a pair of responses filed last month, DPS argues that “while some risk may have been foreseeable,” the student’s history with guns and a previous gun-related school expulsion didn’t suggest that any risk was immediate, and therefore, DPS can’t be held legally liable.
“The student made no specific threat, nor did he indicate he intended to act violently towards (the deans) or anyone else at the school,” lawyers for DPS wrote in one of its responses.
The deans’ lawsuits were filed by two separate law firms and take slightly different approaches, but their main argument is similar: that DPS’ safety policies and practices were too lax.
Mason’s lawsuit argues that DPS knew the shooter, Austin Lyle, “had an affinity for guns and ammunition” and had been expelled from the Cherry Creek School District’s Overland High School in Aurora “for trying to sell an AR-15 gun and ammunition on school grounds” in 2021.
In January 2023, Lyle enrolled at East High because he was living in the school’s boundary. Shortly thereafter, East High put Lyle on a safety plan that required him to verbally check in with an assistant principal before his first class each day, Mason’s lawsuit says.
In early March 2023, other students reported that Lyle had “removed a gun from his backpack and placed it into his pocket while attending class,” Mason’s lawsuit says. When East High staff tried to search Lyle, he fled the school, according to the lawsuit.
Instead of expelling Lyle for having a gun on campus, East High modified his safety plan to require an assistant principal to search him each morning, Mason’s lawsuit says. That assistant principal, Shawne Anderson, later told Denver police that “he was unsure whether he had received any training on how to search students,” the lawsuit says.
A few weeks later, Mason was at East High’s front desk when Lyle walked in and asked to speak with Anderson, the lawsuit says. Mason radioed for Anderson, but he didn’t answer.
Fellow dean Sinclair offered to take Lyle to the dean’s office to wait, Mason’s lawsuit says. Moments later, Sinclair yelled, “Wayne! Wayne! Help me! Help me!” the lawsuit says.
Mason ran into the room and found Sinclar wrestling with Lyle, Mason’s lawsuit says. Lyle shot Sinclar in the chest, abdomen, and leg before twice shooting Mason point-blank in the chest.
“If East High School administration had proper training and adequate policies/protocols, they would have prevented Mr. Mason’s constitutional injuries by keeping (Lyle) outside the school building until properly searched,” Mason’s lawsuit says.
Sinclair’s lawsuit focuses more on DPS’ discipline system, which it argues was “unclear and inconsistently applied.”
The lawsuit alleges that district officials “actively obstructed” East High from expelling students who “presented a danger” to the school. It also alleges that DPS refused to reverse a 2020 decision by the school board to remove armed school police officers from schools even after “the number of guns seized in the District increased five-fold.”
While DPS’ goal of reducing the number of students involved in the criminal justice system “was laudable,” Sinclair’s lawsuit says, “the Board did not provide faculty and staff with the resources, training, and tools necessary to keep people safe while at school.”
As a result, the lawsuit alleges that DPS “placed Mr. Sinclair into an impossible situation: alone in a room, unarmed, confronting an agitated, volatile, and dangerous teenager with a gun and, a few yards away, hundreds of other kids attending a school assembly.
“This predictably resulted in Mr. Sinclair being shot by the student.”
Sinclair’s lawsuit also acknowledges that Lyle took his own life, resulting in “an obviously gifted but immature and volatile young man dead.”
In its responses to both lawsuits, DPS argues that it did take “affirmative steps” to keep students and staff safe, such as by requiring Lyle to be searched each morning.
“This process represented an effort by the Defendants to address the actual risk known to them,” DPS’s response says. The district also argues that “there are no facts alleged” that Lyle “had any propensity to use a firearm,” even though officials knew he’d possessed one.
Furthermore, the removal of armed police officers from Denver schools and Lyle’s gun-related expulsion in Aurora occurred years before the shooting at East High, DPS argues.
“This does not, as a matter of law, allege violence was immediate and proximate,” its responses say, referring to the legal standard required for the district to be found liable.
Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.
