Ex-Paterson teacher who survived baseball bat attack by student may get $350K settlement
PATERSON — A former city teacher, who was beaten with a baseball bat during a May 2019 home instruction session with a 15-year-old student, may be getting a $350,000 settlement in a lawsuit he filed against the school district.
The ex-teacher, Olanrewaju Alade, said in his lawsuit that when he returned to work 21 months after the assault, the same student who attacked him was assigned to his classroom, causing him to pass out in the principal’s office.
That was the end of Alade’s teaching career, which had started in 1999, according to the lawsuit. He had been a special education teacher at Great Falls Academy, an alternative high school for teens with behavioral problems including criminal activity, for almost two decades.
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“He stated he could never teach again, as he fears for his safety,” said an expert report written on Alade’s behalf by a longtime New Jersey schools superintendent, Vincent Varcadipane. “He cannot return to the classroom.”
The Paterson district never alerted Alade to the violent track record of the student who attacked him, identified in court papers as F.L., the educator said in his complaint. F.L. reportedly was involved in several assaults on other students and had gotten suspended from International High School for allegedly bringing a knife to school to attack a vice principal, said Alade’s lawsuit.
The knife incident allegedly happened on May 5, 2019, and prompted the suspension that required F.L. to receive home instruction, the lawsuit said. The baseball bat attack happened on May 29, 2019, several weeks after the knife incident, according to Alade’s court filings.
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The Paterson Board of Education’s agenda for its meeting next week includes a resolution approving a $350,000 in the Alade case. That agenda was made public on Wednesday night.
District officials have a policy of not commenting on pending litigation.
Court records show the private law firm handling the case for the district — Inglesino, Webster, Wyciskala & Taylor — unsuccessfully tried to have Alade’s complaint dismissed.
The district’s lawyers noted in their case that Alade’s home instruction work was a “voluntary assignment” for which he was paid extra money. The district said Alade had received a packet of information about F.L. that covered “his aggressive behavior toward students on multiple occasions in 2018.”
Alade started providing home instruction for F.L. on May 15, 2019, and the student did not engage in any violent behavior toward the educator until the attack, the district said in court papers.
The district also said Alade had acknowledged in statements given as part of the case that it was common for Great Falls Academy students to make threats against teachers, part of the “nature of the school.”
“Mr. Alade had been in altercations with students in the school environment before this incident,” the district lawyers said.
Alade is being represented in the lawsuit by Thomas Rinaldi of the Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow firm in Edison. The firm's expert witness, Varcadipane, said F.L. should never have been on home instruction in light of his violent track record.
Instead, Varcadipane said, the district should have ordered a psychiatric evaluation of the student and, depending on those findings, should have placed the student in a non-district-run therapeutic program “regardless of cost.”
Court records show that Alade and the district agree on many of the facts of what happened on the day of the baseball bat attack. The student’s mother was not home during the incident; his brother and his brother’s girlfriend were.
During the two-hour session, F.L. allegedly left the room where the instruction was taking place and came back with a baseball bat, which he placed by the door, according to court records. Alade was not alarmed and continued the instruction.
At the end of the session, F.L. asked Alade if he wanted a glass of water, but the teacher declined because he was fasting. Alade then started putting on his jacket, and while his back was turned to the student, F.L. hit the teacher in the head with the bat, according to court records.
Alade lost consciousness and awoke to see blood everywhere, asking the student’s brother and girlfriend “if he was going to die,” according to Varcadipane’s report.
Alade was hospitalized for five days after the attack, court records say. It was not clear from the lawsuit files whether F.L. was charged with any crimes in the case, but he was a student at Great Falls Academy almost two years later when Alade returned to work.
Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press.
Email: editor@patersonpress.com
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ teacher injured by baseball bat attack may get $350K
