California couple sues in nephew’s fatal schoolyard beating. How a new law paved the way
Diego Stolz was 13 years old when bullies beat him unconscious at his Southern California middle school last year.
He never awakened and died eight days later at a Riverside-area hospital. The Sept. 16 attack captured on cell phone video quickly went viral and shined new light on a violent history of bullying at the Moreno Valley campus in California’s Inland Empire. Diego’s violent death led to the students’ arrests and angry demands from long-suffering parents calling for change.
Now, a wrongful death lawsuit by the boy’s guardians against Moreno Valley Unified School District and Landmark Middle School near Riverside, made possible by newly signed state law, is demanding action and answers in Diego’s death.
In the 15-page lawsuit filed Sept. 11 in Riverside Superior Court, Juana and Felipe Salcedo blast district officials for “blatantly ignoring red flags that could have saved Diego’s life.”
“Where these administrators failed Diego’s family is how he had been bullied for a year if not more with no real action on their part,” Neil Gehlawat, an attorney for Diego’s guardians, told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday. “The district failed Diego’s family by failing to heed the warnings of Diego, his family and teachers.”
The complaint also alleges a “disturbing trend of bullying — and administrators’ failure to prevent it” at Landmark and other Moreno Valley Unified School District campuses that “has been ongoing for decades” and continues to this day.
Attorneys in the complaint say Diego was another victim of Moreno Valley Unified’s “decades-old bullying epidemic” that included the death of a district student fatally beaten by a bully in 1998 on the same Landmark campus.
Diego’s aunt and uncle became his guardians after his mother died in 2007. Diego’s father died in 2014. The couple cared for Diego and his siblings, but because the couple were not his biological parents and did not take the official step of adopting Diego, they were prevented from taking legal action, Gehlawat said.
That changed with Assembly Bill 2445. The bill penned by Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes, D-San Bernardino, and signed into law Sept. 9, was prompted by Diego’s death.
Reyes’ bill allows a decedent’s legal guardians to bring a civil action if the decedent’s parents were authorized to bring a civil action but have since died.
The Salcedos filed a $100 million claim against the district in October 2019 in their nephew’s death in a precursor to a lawsuit, but the district denied the claim.
“This has been a brutal year for Diego’s family,” Gehlawat said in an earlier statement announcing the lawsuit. “But this new law gives them a fair opportunity to present their case in court and force schools to effectively deal with bullying.”
Moreno Valley Unified officials Wednesday afternoon acknowledged the suit and said the district has taken steps in the year since Diego’s death to address bullying and violence at its schools. The steps include working with school groups and community members along with approving a program through the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office to deescalate school violence.
“The District respects the family’s right to pursue a legal action,” the district’s statement read. “Diego will not be forgotten, and the District certainly understands that this is a difficult time for Diego’s family.”
Southern Californians were shocked at the scene that played out Sept. 16, 2019, on the Landmark campus during the lunch hour: the young Stolz standing stock still, his arms at his sides as his bullies confronted him.
The two boys punched Diego. Diego was wobbled by the punch from the first boy. Diego was stumbling backward when he was hit by the second boy. The force of that blow knocked Diego’s head into a concrete pillar outside the entrance to the school.
Diego, gravely injured, was rushed to a Riverside County hospital where he never regained consciousness.
The boys were later arrested in Diego Stolz’s death and remain in Riverside County juvenile custody on charges of assault and voluntary manslaughter, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported.
Landmark’s principal, Scott Walker, and assistant principals Pedro Gutierrez and Kamilah O’Connor no longer work at the school, according to the Salcedos’ complaint.
The Salcedos and attorney Gehlawat said Diego had been tormented by bullies for a year or more before the Monday afternoon attack that ended his life, including being punched in the head the previous Thursday at the school.
Diego told a school science teacher about the attack who told assistant principal O’Connor and urged her to view the school’s security camera footage, according to the complaint.
O’Connor met that Friday with Diego and an older sister standing in for Juana Salcedo who was recovering at home from a recent surgery. The assistant principal assured Diego that the boys who attacked him would be suspended three days beginning Sept. 16, and that they would be moved out of the class they attended with Diego, the complaint alleged.
Neither happened. Administrators did not review the security footage. The students weren’t suspended.
Instead, the students confronted Diego outside the school’s entrance that Monday and delivered the sucker punches that left the 13-year-old brain damaged and on life support, his family at his bedside.
“The real tragedy behind Diego’s death is that administrators at Landmark Middle School had been warned multiple times that Diego was being bullied by other students,” the complaint read. “And yet, these administrators completely disregarded such warnings and did absolutely nothing to stop the bullying.”
This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 1:13 PM.
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