A vice-principal stabbed by a 15-year-old scholar inside a Halifax highschool is suing a college safety guard, claiming the guard didn’t comply with correct search and de-escalation procedures earlier than the assault.
In a press release of declare filed April 28, vice-principal Wayne Rodgers alleges that on March 20, 2023, Ryan Cosgrove failed to finish a search of the coed and his belongings after the safety guard pulled a weapon from the coed’s faculty bag.
On the time, all three individuals have been in Rodgers’s workplace at Charles P. Allen Excessive College in suburban Bedford.
In keeping with an agreed assertion of info offered final yr to a Nova Scotia youth court docket choose, Cosgrove left the workplace with a butterfly knife and referred to as police, leaving Rodgers alone with the coed in an workplace that was locked from the surface.
Moments later, the coed pulled a folding knife from his faculty bag and stabbed the vice-principal twice as he tried to flee. The boy fled the workplace and stabbed an administrative assistant within the again earlier than he left the constructing and was arrested on faculty grounds.
He later pleaded responsible to 2 counts of aggravated assault and was sentenced to 2 years of probation. His identification is protected against publication beneath the Youth Legal Justice Act.
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Rodgers was stabbed within the higher again and decrease chest, which prompted air and blood to leak into his chest cavity, in accordance with the lawsuit filed with the Nova Scotia Supreme Courtroom. The lawsuit additionally alleges Cosgrove failed to acknowledge the coed was getting agitated and aggressive. And the doc says the safety guard’s choice to shut the workplace’s locked door left the vice-principal trapped with the assailant.
Makes an attempt to achieve Cosgrove for remark have been unsuccessful.
The lawsuit additionally names the Halifax Regional Centre for Schooling, alleging the schooling authority didn’t correctly practice Cosgrove in search and seizure strategies or de-escalation procedures. As effectively, the lawsuit says the schooling authority is vicariously accountable for the damages attributable to the safety guard, saying the centre was conscious of the historical past of violence at the highschool.
The authority was negligent for using an improperly educated safety guard and for failing to have any hiring or coaching insurance policies for safety guards, the lawsuit alleges.
On one other entrance, the lawsuit alleges the schooling authority didn’t warn Rodgers concerning the scholar’s “propensity for violence.”
The schooling authority issued a quick assertion Tuesday saying it couldn’t touch upon the allegations as a result of the case, which offers with a non-public matter with an worker on depart, is earlier than the courts.
In the meantime, Rodgers continues to endure from ache, discomfort and different limitations, in addition to unspecified psychological accidents, the doc says.
The allegations within the assertion of declare have but to be examined in court docket.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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