One of two lawsuits blaming Lakeville Area Schools for the fatal 2015 “Nerf War” car crash involving several Lakeville South High School students has been dismissed because the driver recently died.
Alexander Hughes was living with his uncle in La Quinta, Calif. when he died unexpectedly at home on Nov. 4, according to his obituary.
Hughes died of an accidental overdose of the powerful pain reliever fentanyl, the Riverside County office of the sheriff and coroner said Monday; the synthetic opioid has been killing tens of thousands of Americans each year.
The coroner also determined that a heart condition contributed to the 21-year-old’s death but that injuries from the 2015 car crash were not a factor.
Hughes had filed a lawsuit against the school district in December 2018, claiming the district failed to protect students who were kidnapping each other in the parking lot as part of Nerf War, a student-run tag game with a cash prize.
Hughes reportedly rolled his pickup truck after school on Dec. 4, 2015 while classmates riding with him played the game, which involved tagging each other with Nerf guns and plastic spoons. The crash killed Jacob Flynn, 17, and John Price, 18, and left Hughes with serious injuries.
No criminal charges were filed.
Attorney Michael Bryant, who represented Hughes, said he had to drop the lawsuit because under state law, injury lawsuits can not continue if the plaintiff dies.
Bryant said he’s still looking into the possibility that Hughes’ death was related to injuries from the car crash.
“We don’t know” why Hughes died, Bryant said Monday. “That’s the thing we’re trying to figure out.”
The school district still is defending itself from a wrongful death lawsuit filed in February 2018 by the families of Flynn and Price. A hearing is set for April 9 on the school district’s motion to decide the case in their favor.
The families say the school district failed to warn students about the dangers of Nerf War, which had been played at the two Lakeville high schools since around 2013. School was off-limits, but students often “kidnapped” each other in school parking lots before “killing” them off-site, they said.
The district acknowledged it was aware of the game but has said it was not sanctioned by the schools and was not played on school property.
In a recent court filing, the district responded to a question about how school officials responded to neighbors’ complaints about the game’s dangers.
An administrative team discussed whether they could stop Nerf War but “ultimately concluded that Lakeville South High School could not control a non-school sanctioned activity that occurred off school grounds,” the district said.