Families of victims of Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooting settle lawsuit for $18 million
The settlement stems from a lawsuit alleging that a substitute teacher had been told of the possibility of a shooting but failed to alert school officials.
The settlement amount was determined by the cap of the district's insurance policy, which was
"The plaintiffs elected not to pursue amounts that would erode the school district's general budget that is designated for educating and protecting students," Beauregard wrote in a settlement agreement.
"The facts of this case are tragic, and the errors that led to this lawsuit, substantial," Beauregard wrote.
At the same time, he wrote, the school district, the substitute teacher,
Beauregard noted that a claim against
Messages seeking comment from Cooper's attorney,
The lawsuit was filed by the families of the four students who were killed and a fifth who was critically wounded when 15-year-old
Killed were
A fifth student,
Cooper, a substitute teacher, claimed that she had warned school officials of the impending mass shooting, but later it was revealed that she may actually not have told anyone.
The lawsuit initially named the school district itself, but it was dropped as a defendant after the
Cooper's claim that she had warned the school about the shooting first surfaced in a 1,400-page report released by the
Cooper retracted part of the story to detectives, though later she claimed she was pressured to do so.
According to court documents, Cooper claims she told someone in the attendance office about the message and wrote a note to the teacher whose class she was covering, but nobody -- not the detectives nor the civil attorneys during discovery -- have turned up anyone she talked to, according to the documents.
Likewise, the teacher has said he did not receive any note.
The new documents also include notes from Cooper's medical files, turned over in discovery, that raise additional questions. Notes from two therapists Cooper saw in
One therapist wrote that Cooper was "feeling guilty that prior to the shooting ... a student showed her a text message where the perpetrator had texted he was going to kill himself but the student said not to worry ... and (Cooper) did not follow up with staff."
Cooper, the therapist wrote, "is filled with regret that she did not specifically report what she heard, feeling if she did, there may have been another outcome."
Investigators and attorneys have never found anyone Cooper spoke with, and the teacher she was subbing for recalled no mention of anything like it in Cooper's handoff note.
"An entire school staff does not forget about being warned of an impending shooting," wrote Beauregard, the attorney representing the families. "The truth is that a student warned
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