Suit filed in wheelchair fall that left girl injured

Workers allegedly failed to realize lift wasn’t in place

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A Mahoning County Board of Developmental Disabilities employee pushed a wheelchair-using student out the back of a bus without its wheelchair lift, sending the student “plummeting” to the ground, according to a new lawsuit against the board.

Attorneys for the juvenile student and her mother, Nicole Nixon, filed the civil suit on their behalf Tuesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, bringing two counts of negligence against the board, its Leonard Kirtz School and five related, unidentified employees and corporations.

The suit alleges that board employees charged with transporting the student to Leonard Kirtz School in Austintown on Dec. 13, 2016, “failed to notice that the wheelchair lift was on the ground when they pushed [the student’s] wheelchair out of the bus, sending her plummeting 5 feet to the ground face first.”

The student sustained serious physical injuries and mental anguish in the incident, the suit claims.

The suit brings a claim of negligence against the board, school and related employees and corporations for failing to transport students safely and for hiring, training, supervision and retention of the five unidentified workers “who were unqualified and/or unskilled and/or incompetent.”

The suit seeks a total judgment in excess of $50,000.

Bill Whitacre, board superintendent, declined to comment on the incident as it is in litigation.

Nixon’s attorneys, Ian Fijalkovich and John O’Neil of Elk & Elk Co. in Cleveland, could not immediately be reached to comment Wednesday.