The mother of a 14-year-old boy who was fatally shot two years ago following a football scrimmage at Roxborough High School this week sued the School District of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association.
Meredith Elizalde, in two separate lawsuits, alleged the district and PIAA — the statewide governing body for high school sports — did not do enough to protect her son, Nicolas, on the day he, along with four other teenage boys, were ambushed while walking from the field to the locker room.
In 2022, Nicolas Elizalde was a freshman at W.B. Saul High School and a member of Roxborough High’s junior varsity team, as Saul does not have a football program.
After participating in a Sept. 27 scrimmage with Boys’ Latin Charter and Northeast High School, Nicolas was walking with teammates on Pechin Street when five gunmen got out of a car and fired more than 60 bullets, apparently targeting another boy on the same block who had attended the practice as a spectator.
Nicolas was shot in the chest, and Meredith, who was waiting to take him home, ran to the scene and held him as he bled, according to her legal team. She was with him when he died a short time later at Einstein Medical Center. Four other teens were injured but survived.
Five male suspects have since been arrested and charged with murder. Their cases are pending.
“When a public school district places a 14-year-old student in the shooters’ crosshairs without security or protection, it is not just a tragedy,” Tom Kline, one of Meredith’s attorneys, said in a statement. “It is a violation of his civil rights.”
School officials, as well as those from the state athletic association, should have been on high alert for the possibility of violence, given recent incidents at high school football events and in Roxborough, her legal team asserted in court documents.
Four days before Nicolas was killed, shots were fired outside a game between West Philadelphia and Abraham Lincoln High School, according to Elizalde’s lawsuit. A year earlier, a shooting was reported surrounding a West Philadelphia and Central contest.
No one appears to have been injured in either of those incidents. However, in 2019, two teen spectators were wounded by gunfire while waiting to get into a football game at Simon Gratz High School.
Across the county, there were 40 shooting incidents in and around high school football activities in the five years prior to Nicolas’s death, according to data presented in the lawsuit.
During the same time frame, police documented 75 assaults and weapons violations in the area of Roxborough High School, the attorneys wrote.
School and PIAA representatives did not alert the Philadelphia Police Department in advance of the Sept. 27, 2022, scrimmage or hire additional security, the complaint alleged. District administrators are also accused of not training staff about how to safely organize large athletic events.
“These lawsuits are about justice for Nick and accountability for those who put him in harm’s way,” Kline added.
District and PIAA representatives separately declined to comment on the open litigation.
Witnesses, the suit said, reported seeing a uniformed private security guard on site; however, Elizalde’s legal team has not been able to identify that individual or their company. The firm is listed as an unnamed defendant in the PIAA case.
Elizalde filed a federal civil rights claim against the district, and a wrongful death lawsuit in state court against the PIAA.
Since her son’s death, Elizalde has become a violence prevention and gun control advocate, but she recently moved to Montana for a fresh start and to study for a doctorate in international conservation, according to an Inquirer article.
