SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Jan. 11, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — Parents of two Hunter High School students fatally shot during a clash between Polynesian and Hispanic groups have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Granite School District.
The suit filed Thursday in federal court claims the district and its police force deliberately ignored the escalating violence between the factions. The suit alleges discrimination lead to the mishandling of the racial tensions, resulting in the deaths of Paul Tahi and Tivani Lopati.
“Granite School District was deliberately indifferent to known acts of student-on-student racial harassment and discrimination; it chose to sit by and do nothing.”
The shootings came during the lunch hour of Jan. 13, 2022 as the two groups met across the street from the school. A fight broke out and a single shooter opened fire, killing Tahi and Lopati and seriously injuring a third student.
“According to multiple sources,” the suit reads, “two groups of Hunter High students — one composed of mostly Polynesian students, and one composed of mostly Hispanic students — had been involved in a violent and escalating dispute for nearly the entire school year.”
Several parents of students on multiple occasions in the weeks and months leading up to the killings had advised educators and police, the suit said, that “students were being ‘jumped’ and/or beaten up on and off school grounds and that the disputes were intensifying.”
Defendants failed to properly investigate and address the escalating violence, according to the allegations, and specifically “failed to perform” student discipline screens, student services referrals or to implement student safety plans and inform parents of the situation.
Without listing a dollar amount, the suit seeks “compensatory and consequential damages for the loss of Paul and Tivani’s society, comfort, association, love, counsel, care, consortium and protection, loss of the reasonable expectation to associate with Paul and Tivani for the rest of their natural life” as well as punitive damages.
The first category of damages would ask a jury, upon a guilty verdict, to essentially assess the monetary value of the lives lost over a lifetime, while punitive damages are calculated as a punishment of defendants.
In addition to the wrongful death claims, the suit cites the district’s inaction as a violation of the victims’ civil rights under the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
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