The death of a 16-year-old girl who died at a hospital days after she was involved in an altercation in a high school bathroom was ruled by the county Medical Examiner’s Office to be accidental, caused by the results of prior head injury.
Shaylee Mejia died March 15, six days after she fainted while attending a birthday party. Her mother, Maria Juarez, told reporters her daughter never regained consciousness once she was taken to the hospital.
The medical examiner deemed the manner of her death to be “accident,” while the cause was listed as “sequelae of blunt head trauma,” or resulting from earlier head trauma, although the case remains open.
According to Juarez, her daughter had been targeted by bullies in a fight at Manual Arts High School in December, leaving her with multiple bruises. She claims that when she tried to bring the fight to the attention of school officials the next day, they brushed off her concerns.
Shaylee was involved in a second fight on March 5, four days before the March 9 birthday party where she fainted. According to her mother, video from the March 5 fight, which occurred in a Manual Arts bathroom, shows Shaylee’s head slamming into a bathroom wall.
Civil rights attorney Luis Carrillo told the Los Angeles Times the girl’s death could have been prevented if school officials had taken some action to prevent the fights.
“They don’t protect the kids,” he told The Times. “I believe that the failure to protect (Juarez’s) child is the main reason why she’s dead right now. … If they had taken action in December, the child would still be alive.”
Carrillo said the cellphone video of the bathroom fight clearly shows Shaylee’s head hitting the wall, calling the impact “grotesque.”
A Los Angeles Unified School District representative told The Times that police are investigating the matter, and pointed to messages sent to parents by Principal Alejandro Macias. The first offered condolences to those impacted by the teen’s death and offered counseling support. Another message sent the next day discusses an incident in which “school staff intervened to break up a physical altercation between students” and says security would be increased on campus. That message did not indicate if the altercation was the one involving Shaylee, The Times reported.
According to The Times, cell phone video of two fights involving Shaylee, both apparently in bathrooms, do not show any school staff intervening, but shows students breaking up the altercations. The videos are also unclear about where and when the fights occurred, according to The Times.