Clyde Best was sentenced to sixty years for murdering his Knox College classmate, Andrea Racibozynski, in 1998 after a fraternity-party fight; he was identified and caught within three hours of the crime. The murder is, Racibozynski’s attorney Ed Manzke argued, the fault of the college for the way lighting in the stairwell was designed; a jury agreed, and awarded $1.05 million. (Bill Bird, “Family wins $1 mil. suit against Knox College”, Naperville Sun/Chicago Sun-Times, May 24).
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Without knowing the actual evidence, we are left to speculate on the theory of negligence. The article says “poor lighting” and “inadequate security.”
The account of the murder indicates that it was unclear whether or not they could have saved her life if someone had found her sooner. Perhaps the theory was that she would have been found and her life saved, had the college provided a security patrol or the hallway lighted (of course, if she lived, she would have no doubt suffered traumatic brain injuries requiring decades of home care, likely upping the jury’s award considerably).
At any rate, $1 million is not a heck of a lot of money for a successful wrongful death suit. The jury compromised. It looks like her father is pissed off about it.
Andrea is my daughter. If the lighting had been functioning, the stairwell in the student union would have been highly visible from the outside, as well as a deterrent. The emergency phone that the first student who found her and ran to was not working. He had to run up the stairs to another phone. The call went to a guard who was sitting in the computer room in the same building that the incident took place–guarding the computers, not people. That guard represented 1/3 of the security staff on duty. When he got the call about an injured student, he didn’t call 911 or an ambulance, but instead went to see what happened. When told by another guard who arrived afterwards to call for help, he didn’t use his radio, because there apparently were communications concerns, so he went back to the computer lab to make the call. And FYI–we did not say that Andrea’s death was solely the fault of Knox, but we and the jury as well, believed that the school played a role in this tragedy.
Regarding the jury award, I am NOT UPSET about it. We are grateful to the Galesburg jury for helping to put colleges and universities on notice that they have a responsibility to provide a safe environment for their students. My reaction to the question asked, which was along the lines of “Do you feel the million dollars is a fair amount for the loss of your daughter?” My response was that a million dollars is nothing when you consider that life is priceless, and I further stated that I’d give it all and a million more (if I could get it) to have her back.
I hope that none of you ever have the tragic misfortune to lose a son or daughter. If you did, how do you think you might react under these circumstances–just walk away, or try to do something to prevent it from happening again?