Posted on 09/27/2013 9:52:03 AM PDT by Gamecock
A thoughtless phone call forced a bereaved father to begin grieving all over again.
Brooklyn teen Jean Fritz Pierre drowned on a class field trip in June, but that didn’t stop school officials who called his devastated dad last week to tell him his son was skipping class.
Jonas Pierre, who this month filed a notice of claim for two $5 million suits against the city over the 16-year-old’s death, said staff from Prospect Heights International High School called him to set up a meeting to discuss his son’s awful attendance record.
The distraught dad said the school’s insensitive phone call broke his heart again just as he began to recover from the greatest loss any parent could ever experience.
“I think, why are you calling, why are you telling me this,” said Pierre. “Don’t you know my son is dead?”
Pierre, 39, a retail worker, shared a humble Flatbush walkup with his beloved only son until the teen’s untimely death. “Maybe the school doesn’t think it’s important, but it’s important to me,” he said. “I don’t think I could ever get another son like him.”
The doomed freshman was one of 48 students on a field trip to Rockland County’s Bear Mountain State Park. The trip, intended to be a joyous celebration of the school year’s end, turned tragic when Jean Fritz and a friend left the group to cool down in Hessian Lake, where swimming is banned because of deep pits in the lake’s bottom.
Park workers who spotted the teens called them four times to return to dry land, but it was too late — Jean Fritz disappeared under the water. After a 50-minute search, police discovered his body. Cops said the cause of death was accidental drowning.
A probe by city investigators this week cleared school staffers in Jean Fritz’s death, but Pierre blames the school all the same.
Education Department officials said they would make sure Pierre receives no more calls.
“We apologize for any pain or suffering this may have caused the family and are checking all data systems to ensure that the family doesn’t receive these calls anymore,” said agency spokeswoman Erin Hughes.
But attorney Mark Rayo, who filed the suits on behalf of Pierre and his son, said the father hasn’t heard an apology from the city.
“They added insult to injury,” said Rayo. “How neglectful can you get?”
...Jean Fritz and a friend left the group to cool down in Hessian Lake, where swimming is banned because of deep pits in the lake’s bottom.Park workers who spotted the teens called them four times to return to dry land, but it was too late — Jean Fritz disappeared under the water. After a 50-minute search, police discovered his body. Cops said the cause of death was accidental drowning.
This is just a couple miles from West Poin, home of The United States Military Academy
and
This is where is is thought FDR contracted Polio.
“How neglectful can you get?”
They have already proven how bad they can get.
Sorry for the lost and having to deal with the mind numb robots in control.
If the incident happened as reported, I would have a hard time supporting this suit against the school. I also doubt that this call is anything more than the school not having received notification of death via their normal process and thus, the records have not been updated properly.
Anyone who takes someone else’s kids anywhere these days needs to have their heads examined in our litigious society.
How was this negligence on the part of the school? What should they have done, chained them all together and marched them in unison around the place?? The school has deep pockets and will pay, either after the trial or in preliminary hearings to avoid a much higher post trial award.
No doubt public schools are at least as stupid as we suspect.
But.....
It would appear that the boy willfully was where he shouldn’t have been. Had he been 6 years or so, the school would have devoted a bit more attention to herding the cats. But, he was sixteen...and as such shouldered the majority of the responsibility of not doing something risky.
Yepper! Another example of how fouled up the school system is. The kids death was bad enough EVERYONE in the school administration should have known he had died yet they made the call. Outrageous!
The nation is evil, except for the remnant.
If he is suing the school system, then I suspect this was done on purpose.
I agree. The boys refused to come back when called repeatedly.
As for the phone call, maybe the person was indifferent and rude. I got the same treatment after having my pet euthanized, had a bad experience with that, and then got "reminder" calls. Of course, there is no comparison to losing a child -- the worst loss imaginable. But should the taxpayer be billed for it? I say not.
Why is the father suing the city when the son ignored the warnings about swimming in a body of water that was dangerous? If I run a red light and get killed in a car accident I have no one to blame but myself.
Am I missing something?
I would have accepted the appointment to discuss my dead son’s absences with the school and taken a film crew with me. The ensuing embarrassment would serve these clueless fools right.
How could the school not know that he died? He was in their care when it happened.
Why didn’t the teacher know he’d left the group?
Ever deal with a bureaucracy? A bureaucracy has very specific ins and outs and processes to update their files. Just because the legal department knows of the death, does not mean that the attendance department was notified.
Not polio — it’s now believed he had Guillain-Barré syndrome.
So you’re saying that a young boy died while in their care and some people at the school didn’t know about it? It was a secret? *sigh*
More likely they get Fed tax dollars and are loathe to lose a single seat filler, even through death, to continue with that allotment.
I'm more likely to believe the records have not been updated by the bureaucracy "accidentally on purpose" for those funds, rather than to inflict [more] anguish.
...insensitive phone call broke his heart again....
Oh puuhhhlease.
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