Lawsuit that claimed Philly school district contributed to Nicolas Elizalde’s death is dismissed

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit in which a mother whose only child was shot and killed in 2022 asserted that the Philadelphia School District failed to protect students from gun violence and contributed to her son’s death.

Nicolas Elizalde, 14, was fatally struck by a stray bullet in September 2022 while walking off the Roxborough High School football field following a scrimmage. Elizalde and his teammates were heading toward the locker room when five gunmen, targeting an unknown player, opened fire, striking Elizalde once in the chest and wounding four other teens.

He was Meredith Elizalde’s only child.

Meredith Elizalde sued the district last year, accusing school officials of failing to secure the football field and organizing after-school activities “without adequate security and coordination with law enforcement.” Her lawyer, Tom Kline of Kline & Specter, said in an earlier statement that the district “knew the hours after school are the most dangerous time of day for Philadelphia students, and that sports events like the one where Nicolas Elizalde was shot and killed are a magnet for the gun violence that is plaguing our city.”

The school district did not tell police of the Sept. 27, 2022, scrimmage, coordinate with law enforcement, or dispatch additional security to the event, the lawsuit said, despite prior shootings at Philadelphia football events and prior assaults near Roxborough High.

But U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg, in an opinion filed Tuesday, said Elizalde and her lawyers failed to establish that Nicolas’ death was the district’s fault. Instead, Goldberg said, it was the random shooters who put the children at the field in danger that day.

For that reason, the judge said, he must dismiss the lawsuit.

“While it is certainly possible that the School District could have made the area surrounding the athletic event safer by hiring security or notifying police, the School District did not create an unsafe environment or make students more vulnerable to gun violence,” Goldberg wrote.

The lawsuit did not show the district was aware of specific threats to Nicolas Elizalde and his teammates that afternoon, the judge said, and officials could not have foreseen that scheduling a scrimmage without security could result in a random, deadly shooting. Nicolas Elizalde “was not placed in more danger than any other pedestrian on the street that day,” he wrote, and it is “too speculative” to assume hiring security could have prevented the shooting.

The case centers “the heartbreaking death of an innocent 14-year-old who was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Goldberg wrote, but there is no proof it was the fault of the school district.

Kline, in a statement, said he and his team plan to appeal the judge’s decision, and “wholeheartedly believe that the elements of a civil rights violations are met.”

A spokesperson for the school district declined to comment.

Nicolas Elizalde was a freshman at Walter B. Saul High School, but because the school doesn’t have athletics, he played on Roxborough’s junior varsity football team. He wore No. 62 and played corner.

He was a gentle soul who was passionate about protecting the environment, animals, and preventing injustice, his family said. He and his mother would attend protests and rallies against gun violence, in support of the rights of women and Palestinian people.

But he was also a child from Delaware County who loved the 76ers and Eagles, and watching sci-fi movies and Marvel films with his parents. His favorite athletes — like Jalen Hurts, Furkan Korkmaz, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Malcolm Jenkins — inspired him on and off the field, his mom said.

Six people have been charged in his death. Two teens pleaded guilty to participating in the shooting and were sentenced to decades in prison. The four others are expected to go to trial this fall.