Their son died on a Phoenix school trip. School district isn't protecting students, family says
The family of a Phoenix teen said Phoenix Union High School District’s recent overhaul of rules governing student travel is too little too late after their son was found dead in a lake in 2023. Investigators later ruled it as an accidental drowning.
The district garnered media attention after 15-year-old Christopher Hampton, who attended Cesar Chavez High School in Phoenix, went missing during a football summer camp in July 2023. Hampton and other football players were attending the camp in the White Mountains at Lakeside Blue Ridge High and decided to go to Show Low Lake, where Hampton ultimately drowned.
Benjamin Taylor, an attorney representing Hampton’s mother, Tonisha Johnson, told The Arizona Republic that the policy overhaul wasn’t enough to prevent similar tragedies from occurring.
“Unfortunately, no amount of policies can help because if you administrators and coaches who don’t follow the policies, another drowning like this will happen again,” Taylor said. “So what the family wants is — they don’t want another family to have to go through another death like this ever again.”
Phoenix Union’s governing board unanimously voted on Feb. 1 to overhaul its rules governing student travel. The new policy prohibits swimming, along with several other activities like scuba diving, rock climbing and zip lining, unless the activity relates to an Arizona Interscholastic Association-sanctioned sport or competition. It also requires prior approval from district administration for all water activities.
"PXU is always reviewing and revising our processes and procedures connected to all school-related business," district spokesperson Richard Franco wrote in a statement. "This practice is connected to our commitment of continuous improvement to best serve our students, staff, and community."
Student's family: 'The pain of him gone is unbearable'
Johnson filed a notice of claim in August that blames the Phoenix Union High School District, Cesar Chavez's former football coach and athletic director, the Blue Ridge Unified School District, Show Low, Arizona Game & Fish and Recreation Resource Management of America for "almost incomprehensible carelessness" leading to Hampton's death.
A notice of claim is a mandatory precursor to a lawsuit against a public entity or employee in Arizona.
Hampton's death was preventable and was "caused by the gross negligence of the adults who were responsible for taking care of him," according to the notice of claim. A formal lawsuit had not been filed as of Wednesday.
Taylor told The Republic that school staff failed to take a headcount of students before leaving Show Low and only realized Hampton was missing until another student asked where he was. He added that the coaches left the teenagers unsupervised at a part of a lake where signs saying “No Swimming” were posted.
Taylor said that Johnson learned her son was missing not from school officials or law enforcement — but rather from a friend of her son who snuck away from camp and found a cell phone as phones were banned at the camp. Johnson immediately got into her car and drove to the camp from Phoenix that night.
“Once they did find him, she had to identify the body at the lake, knowing that these coaches could have prevented this,” Taylor said.
“Christopher was loving and an excellent student,” Hampton’s family said in a statement. “The pain of him gone is unbearable."
Taylor added that Hampton’s family remained haunted by a plethora of unanswered questions surrounding his death, such as how a teen who didn’t know how to swim ended up in a lake where swimming wasn’t allowed in the first place.
“Family members should be worried about their kids because if there’s a lot of administrators and teachers out there — and coaches are not following policies, other parents should be worried that their kid might drown too.”
Reach the reporter Perry Vandell at perry.vandell@gannett.com or 602-444-2474. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @PerryVandell.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix Union's new travel policy isn't enough, family says
