Attorneys for a Black teenage girl who was allegedly body-slammed and called an “animal” by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy working as a school resource officer at Lancaster High School in 2021 have clarified in new court papers that she has tentatively settled her lawsuit against the county and other parties.
The plaintiff, born in 2004, is identified only as Jane Doe 1 in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that also named as defendants the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Deputy Daniel Acquilano and the Antelope Valley Union High School District.
On Monday, her attorneys filed court papers with Judge Armen Tamzarian notifying him of a “conditional” settlement in the case with the expectation a request for dismissal will be filed by Aug. 13. No terms were divulged.
On May 10, the plaintiff’s lawyers filed court papers requesting only that their client’s case be dismissed “with prejudice” — meaning the case cannot be refiled — but no explanation was given for the dismissal request.
In their court papers, attorneys for the county stated that Acquilano “used force against Jane Doe 1 when she refused to give him her cell phone and walked away from him at Lancaster High School.”
But in a sworn declaration, the plaintiff said she asked the deputy to cite her at the Lancaster sheriff’s station and then take her home rather than to juvenile hall.
“In response, (Deputy) Acquilano said to me, `You’re an animal … and you belong there,”’ the plaintiff said. “He was referring to me belonging at juvenile hall. I believe he referred to me as an `animal’ and sent me, the victim, to juvenile hall because I am Black. I believe he would not call a white person an `animal’ and would not have sent a white teenager to juvenile hall who behaved in the same innocent manner as me.”
Although another deputy opposed taking the plaintiff to juvenile hall, Acquilano instructed a colleague to drive for two hours to Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, where she was “booked and put in a jail cell until my mom came to pick me up later in the evening,” the plaintiff said.
In earlier court papers, attorneys for the county and the district denied any liability and stated that the plaintiff was not entitled to damages in the suit brought in May 2022.
The alleged body slam was recorded on video and occurred Aug. 30, 2021, when the plaintiff was 16 years old. Doe’s mother was forced to look for alternative education for her daughter through independent study because the district has not removed Acquilano from Lancaster High, the suit stated.