A lawsuit was filed against Los Angeles Unified and Los Angeles County Friday April 29, on behalf of a 15-year-old girl who alleges a school bus driver refused to pick her up in a high-crime area in Wilmington while she was trying to get to school and that she was later found disoriented at a park.
The negligence suit was filed by the teen’s mother in Los Angeles Superior Court and seeks unspecified damages.
An LAUSD representative did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.
The suit states that last fall the LAUSD told the student to report to a bus stop at Hawaiian Avenue and F Street so she could be driven to Dodson Middle School. But on the morning of Sept. 10, the school bus driver would not let her come aboard even as other students did so, the suit alleges.
Hours later, the girl was found by Los Angeles Port Police officers at Wilmington Waterfront Park, many blocks from the bus stop, the suit states. She was “face-down, crawling on the ground, muddy, reaching for objects that weren’t there and in a disoriented, confused and delusional state of mind,” the suit states.
The officers were concerned that because she was found in a gang- infested area, she may have been sexually assaulted, according to the lawsuit.
The girl was taken to a hospital and treated, the suit states.