Lawsuit against CCSD says a student suffered brain injury from bullying

A mother has accused the Clark County School District of failing to protect her son, which she said resulted in him being beaten by another student to the point of traumatic brain injury.

Amber Salazar filed a lawsuit on Tuesday on behalf of her 16-year-old son Anthony Salazar.

Around Oct. 2 of last year, a student attacked Anthony Salazar after he got off the bus, the suit stated. The next day, he became catatonic, or unresponsive, and was taken in an ambulance to the hospital. He has since been diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, according to the complaint.

“You should never send your kid to school and have them come back severely injured,” Salazar’s attorney, Marjorie Hauf, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday.

The school district has a policy that its officials do not comment on pending litigation.

This was not the first time the perpetrator had harassed the student, the complaint said.

In April 2023, the student — who rode the same bus as Salazar — repeatedly tried to fight him at the bus stop. The student would also follow Salazar home and try to fight him, the complaint said.

In one instance, Salazar’s father was there, and intervened to stop the other student, according to the complaint.

Salazar stopped riding the bus “to avoid the bullies and aggressor students and protect himself,” the complaint said. On the day of the incident, he had needed to take the bus.

‘Persistent and pervasive’ bullying

Before that, Salazar had been a victim of “persistent and pervasive” bullying, the complaint said. The boy and his mother had reported the bullying multiple times in both middle and high school, the complaint said.

Salazar was assaulted in the Mannion Middle School bathroom in February 2022, when he was an eighth grade student there, according to the complaint.

Ever since, the complaint said, he has been “harassed, threatened and bullied in person, via smartphone and online.” The bullying continued in grades nine through 11 at Foothill High School, according to the complaint.

Despite the physical, mental and emotional impacts, the complaint said, Salazar has experienced since the alleged bullying, Salazar remains a student at Foothill High School.

“He’s a very strong kid who does not want to let the bullies or the system win,” Hauf said. “He’s fighting hard to get back to where he started from.”

The lawsuit accused the district of having “actual and constructive knowledge” that Salazar was being bullied. There was a safety plan in place in which he was supposed to be able to seek refuge in the school office when he felt unsafe, the complaint said.

The complaint accused the school district of knowing, even before 2022, that the students perpetrating the accused violence had a history of bullying and violence against other students.

“Despite this knowledge, defendants failed to impose any reasonable restrictions upon the bullies and aggressor students or otherwise failed to implement any reasonable safeguards for the protection of other students,” the complaint said.

This case is not the first of its kind.

In August, another mother filed a lawsuit against the district and the family of a student she says physically and verbally assaulted her son on a school bus, causing brain injuries and emotional suffering.

The school district has paid high prices for litigation recently, listing it as one of two reasons for its projected budget deficit. Interim Superintendent Brenda Larsen-Mitchell said during the Oct. 10 Clark County School Board meeting that the district had allotted $30 million for litigation and went $23 million over.

Hauf said she has represented similar cases before, and has noticed that CCSD’s first inclination is to deflect or deny instead of truly investigate.

“If things were appropriately investigated at the school level, things could get better,” she said.

Contact Katie Futterman at kfutterman@reviewjournal.com.