Judge allows East High School dean lawsuit to proceed citing Denver Public Schools "shocking disregard for risk"

A federal judge is allowing a lawsuit by a former Denver high school administrator who was shot on campus three years ago to move forward, revealing new details about what school officials knew before the attack.

On March 25, U.S. District Judge Gordon P. Gallagher ruled that former East High School Dean Eric Sinclair's constitutional claim against Denver Public Schools can proceed to the evidence-gathering stage. Sinclair alleges DPS violated his 14th Amendment due process rights through "state-created danger."

In his order, the judge wrote that it is "hard not to imagine the terror that students and parents at East High would have felt" had they known the chain of events leading up to the March 2023 shooting, in which Sinclair and another dean were wounded.

According to court documents, a student sent East High's assistant principal a photo of the shooter with what appeared to be a gun in his pocket just days before the attack. The shooter had previously been expelled by another school district for possession of an AR-15 rifle, and is identified in court records as A.L.  The judge declared that DPS showed "a shocking disregard for the risk" the student posed to the school.

Sinclair was unaware of the student's history with firearms or that a safety plan had been put in place at the time of the shooting, court documents state. The teenage suspect fled the school and died by suicide later that day.

The ruling dismissed several portions of the case, including claims against the DPS Board of Education and a former assistant principal. 

"At this stage in the proceedings, the court must take what the plaintiff has alleged as fact," DPS said in a statement. "DPS has not had the opportunity to present its own facts and evidence."

The district said it is "confident that the evidence will demonstrate that its actions in this case were consistent with legal requirements."

East High parent Stephen Katsaros said the court proceedings provide a necessary opportunity for public transparency and accountability by DPS.

"Their safety plan did not work. It failed, and there's been death and a lot of suffering as a result of their poor choices," Katsaros said. "We need moments like this to understand what happened and to make decisions if we want to be educated in the systems like this."

View the ruling in this case below: