The family of a Virginia teenager who died after she collapsed at school is filing a wrongful death lawsuit, WTKR reports.
According to the family, 16-year-old Kaleiah Jones, a sophomore at Menchville High School, collapsed at school in February. Jones laid on the floor for roughly nine minutes without anyone starting CPR or getting an AED, according to surveillance footage reviewed by the family.
"She's still waiting for help, she's still waiting for help. It was the longest nine minutes," Jones' aunt, Porscha Frank, previously said.
When Jones did receive help, school personnel allegedly only performed 17 seconds of CPR and left the teen lying on the floor for seven more minutes. EMS later arrived and took Jones to the hospital, where she died.
Jones' family said the school was aware that she suffered from Bradycardia, or a slow heart rate.
"If they would have started chest compressions, it would have started back her heart," Frank said.
The family recently announced that they were filing an $85 million wrongful death lawsuit against Newport News Public Schools (the Newport News School Board is the legal entity), the City of Newport News, and school personnel they allege could've saved Jones' life. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Virginia-based lawyer Mark Krudys are representing the Jones family in the suit.
"It's not until the passage of nine minutes that the school resource officer spontaneously starts CPR on Kaleiah and then unfathomably 17 seconds after just stops. Then seven more minutes pass before the rescue squad arrives at the school . . . And nobody obtains the AED, there are three of them in that school, and none of them were brought to the scene," Krudys said in a statement. "This is the perfect circumstance for an AED to be utilized. A relatively healthy young person and all her heart was needing was an electrical charge."
"Seconds matter. Time is of essence. We got defibrillators for this specific instance. That is why they made the law," Crump said in a statement.
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