Parents File Suit In School Death District, Suspect And His Parents Named In Wrongful Death Claim
The parents of the first of three people killed during last year’s shooting rampage in a Moses Lake classroom filed a lawsuit Friday against the accused murderer, his parents and the school district.
Manuel and Licha Vela, parents of Manuel Vela Jr., sued defendant Barry Loukaitis, Terry and Joanne Loukaitis and the Moses Lake School District.
Vela was 14 when Loukaitis marched into Frontier Junior High School on Feb. 2, walked into a seventh-grade math class, then fired a rifle shot into Vela’s chest at close range, authorities said.
Loukaitis then shot and killed teacher Leona Caires, student Arnold Fritz and then severely wounded student Natalie Hintz, according to police.
Loukaitis, who was 15 at the time of the shootings, will be tried as an adult this fall in Seattle.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for wrongful death.
Among several claims, the Velas say the school district should have known Loukaitis was dangerous to others.
The suit filed in Grant County Superior Court claims that one or more Frontier Junior High staff members saw Loukaitis enter the building after classes had begun that day, but failed to stop or monitor him.
“This is not about money,” Manuel Vela Sr. said during a press conference in Moses Lake.
“It’s about getting answers to our questions. My two sons, Manuel’s brothers, ask me: ‘Why did this happen?’ Now, I don’t have any answers.”
Moses Lake attorney Joe Schwab said the Velas are using the lawsuit as a “tool” to gather information from the school district.
They want to know “what the school district knew about the problem, and when they knew it,” Schwab said.
The Velas are the third family of victims to file civil lawsuits against Loukaitis and the school district. The Hintz and Fritz families have filed similar actions.
The civil suits cannot begin until after the criminal case against Loukaitis is finished.
But court rules allow attorneys to start interviewing school staff and file written questionnaires from this point on, Schwab said.
Up to this point, Moses Lake school officials have made little effort to give attorneys or victims’ families information on what concerns it may have had prior to February 1996.
“I don’t want to make it seem that the school district is acting protectively,” Schwab said. “What they’ve done is rational, considering they have been placed in the role of defendant in more than one legal action,” Schwab said.
“I don’t even know, at this point, if the school district had any policy about people bringing guns to school buildings. We’d like to know that.”
, DataTimes