School district to pay $15.75M over California 13-year-old’s asthma death, lawyer says

To test a science experiment, 13-year-old Adilene Carrasco walked with her classmates about 370 yards to the middle school’s athletic field on Oct. 31, 2019.

To celebrate Halloween, the Mesa View Middle School class in Calimesa, California was holding a “pumpkin chuckin’ contest,” where students would test their launchers to see how far a pumpkin could travel, according to a plaintiff’s trial brief filed in July 2020 in state superior court in San Bernadino County.

Before she could test her launcher, Adilene suffered an asthma attack while walking back to her classroom to get her inhaler. The attack continued as she walked back to the field, then on her way to the nurse’s office, the trial brief said.

She died days after being taken to a hospital.

Adilene’s family filed a lawsuit against the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District in July 2020, Panish Shea Boyle Ravipudi LLP’s director of public relations, Angela Bailey, told McClatchy News.

A week before the trial was scheduled to begin, the school district settled the lawsuit with Adilene’s family for $15.75 million, according to Bailey.

“Adilene’s death was a preventable tragedy that resonates and reaffirms the fear of every parent and caregiver of an asthmatic child,” attorney Robert Glassman said in a news release.

Neither the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District nor its attorney immediately responded to McClatchy News’ request for comment on Nov. 21.

Adilene’s mother, Edith Sepulveda, said the lawsuit “was not about the money,” according to The Press Enterprise.

“It’s about not letting that happen to another family, so that no other family has to go through what we’re going through,” Sepulveda told the newspaper. “You need to be able to take your kids to school and know they will come back to you.”

Day of the attack

On the day of the asthma attack, Adilene asked her teacher for permission to go back to her classroom to retrieve her inhaler from her backpack, as she “started having difficulty breathing,” according to the trial brief. The teacher told her she could bring a friend along.

The two walked uphill back to campus, the trial brief said. Despite taking a couple puffs from the inhaler, “it did not help her feel any better,” according to her friend, the trial brief states.

The two girls then trekked back to the field, the trial brief said. Adilene asked for permission to go to the nurse’s office because “she wasn’t feeling well and that her inhaler did not help her.”

At this point, “Adilene was unable to stand up straight and her voice sounded shaky and wheezy,” according to her friend’s testimony in a deposition, the trial brief said.

The teacher granted her permission to go to the nurse’s with a friend, the trial brief said. As the two again walked toward campus, Adilene’s condition worsened, her friend said.

“At a certain point, she couldn’t stand on her own and had to be supported,” her friend testified. “She was breathing very hard in a way, like, gasping almost for air, and her voice wasn’t clear in a way, if that’s a good way to describe it. It wasn’t clear enough to understand what she was saying.”

A campus monitor in a golf cart stumbled upon the pair and noticed Adilene’s condition, the trial brief said.

“She looked tired, and when she said she needed help, she — words didn’t really come out. She just mouthed it,” the campus monitor testified, according to the trial brief. “And when she got into the golf cart, she kind of collapsed onto my chest.”

The school’s nurse took over care for Adilene, brought her to the backroom, started performing CPR and called 911, the trial brief said. During that time, the nurse believed he saw signs that Adilene was suffering a seizure.

Adilene was taken to a hospital “where she remained unconscious and unresponsive.”

“Adilene was tragically declared brain dead nine days later on November 9, 2019 after having acute respiratory failure,” according to the trial brief.

‘Senseless tragedy’

The trial brief said the district was negligent in following its safety protocols in response to Adilene’s asthma attack, not properly training staff in the district’s own safety protocols and for speculating that Adilene may have died from an allergic reaction.

“This senseless tragedy resulted from the school district’s negligence in failing to properly assess, evaluate and address Adilene’s asthma attack.”

Adilene had a history of asthma that was noted in the school’s electronic database, according to the trial brief. In the months leading up to her fatal asthma attack, she had two documented attacks.

The trial brief states that her teacher failed to follow the school’s safety protocols, specifically one intended for if a “student is having ‘difficulty breathing,’” according to the trial brief.

“The school protocol is to ‘call the office in order to get an adult chaperon to escort the student to the nurse [and] DO NOT send students with a ‘buddy’ student,’” the trial brief said.

“To help prevent this type of tragedy from occurring again,” the school district will adopt the California School Boards Association’s best practices on asthma management, update its safety protocols for students with medical conditions and work with medical experts to provide asthma management training to staff, the release from the family’s attorney said.

“Change needed to happen,” Sepulveda told The Press Enterprise. “And it’s happening, thank God.”

Calimesa is about 70 miles east of Los Angeles.

This story was originally published November 21, 2022 at 5:44 PM with the headline "School district to pay $15.75M over California 13-year-old’s asthma death, lawyer says."

Daniella Segura

McClatchy DC

Daniella Segura is a national real-time reporter with McClatchy. Previously, she’s worked as a multimedia journalist for weekly and daily newspapers in the Los Angeles area. Her work has been recognized by the California News Publishers Association. She is also an alumnus of the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley.