Los Angeles Unified School District attorneys are defending their request to review the autopsy photos of a 15-year-old girl whose mother is suing the district regarding the teen’s 2022 overdose in a bathroom at Bernstein High School in Hollywood, saying the information is vital to the defense.
Plaintiff Elena Perez’s Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges that school officials knew there was a problem with drug use at the campus, but took no action that could have saved her daughter, Melanie Ramos. The coroner’s report stated that Melanie died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl on Sept. 13, 2022.
Perez’s lawyers recently filed court papers with Judge Lisa R. Jaskol asking her to deny the LAUSD’s motion to compel the coroner’s office to turn over the girl’s 70 autopsy photos. The coroner’s office previously produced the autopsy report to the district.
But in court papers brought Wednesday, LAUSD attorneys defend their subpoena to the coroner’s office, which has joined Perez in objecting to the subpoena.
“Pictures can be highly relevant to determining time of death, as a review of literature from the National Institutes of Health makes clear,” the LAUSD attorneys state in their court papers
The date that Melanie died, she and a fellow student skipped class and bought drugs, then sometime later that afternoon they entered a school bathroom and ingested the drugs. Melanie died of a drug overdose.
The time of death is a key issue, the district lawyers maintain in their court papers.
However, Perez’s attorneys argue in their court papers that the LAUSD wants the autopsy photographs in order to “cause mental stress and agony on plaintiff Perez.”
Perez’s lawyers further maintain that Melanie’s family members have a common law privacy right in the death images and they may invoke such right to prevent the dissemination of post-mortem images of their loved one.
An LAUSD attorney has offered no opinions by medical professionals as to how the photographs would offer additional information regarding the time of death other than what is already available in the coroner’s report and other documents, according to Perez’s lawyers court papers.
But attorneys for the district counter in their court papers that they do not object to reasonable safeguards to protect Perez’s privacy.
“Plaintiff’s bald and unfounded allegations that the school district seeks to morbidly pry has no basis,” the district lawyers maintain in their court while also stating that a protective order already is in place and that the images can be destroyed after the case is over.
A hearing on the motion is scheduled Thursday.
Melanie was found dead on a bathroom floor at the school at about 8 p.m. after the family claims that school officials realized she was missing. Authorities said the girl ingested a pill she thought was Percocet, but was believed to be laced with fentanyl. Another girl who had been with Melanie earlier and had overdose symptoms survived.
Days later, police announced the arrest of a 15-year-old boy who allegedly sold the drug to the two students on the Bernstein campus, and a 16-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly peddling drugs to another student at nearby Lexington Park.
Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore said both suspects were students at APEX Academy charter school, which is located on the Bernstein High School campus.
The teen’s death also prompted the district to announce that all of its campuses would be supplied with the anti-overdose medication Narcan. In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law SB 10, known as Melanie’s Law and named after Melanie Ramos. The law requires public schools to train employees on opioid prevention techniques and response, and to increase awareness about the dangers of fentanyl.
Perez sued the district in December 2022.