Family of Brandeis student claims campus police were negligent in death

“Brandeis University and its security department failed Eli Stewart in almost every way possible,” Howard M. Cooper, who represents Stewart’s family in the lawsuit, said in a recent telephone interview. “Eli should be alive today.”

The Waltham Institute and its officers left Stewart “to die alone and in agony for hours, begging for help and making it clear they did not want to die,” the lawsuit says.

“Eli’s cries for help were captured by their phone, which recorded what was happening,” the complaint states. “Had the defendants acted in time, Eli would be alive.”

In a statement Thursday, Brandeis said Stewart was “a beloved member of the Brandeis community and their loss has been deeply felt on campus.”

“We extend our deepest condolences to their family,” the university said. “Their friends, roommates, teachers and peers are mourning their deaths. Brandeis has offered resources and support to all those affected by the tragic loss of Eli.”

Nothing is more important to a school than the safety of its students, Brandeis said, and the school is staffed by “caring, skilled and dedicated professionals who support our students every day.”

“Consistent with best practices in higher education, Brandeis has interdisciplinary security resources available to all members of the community,” the statement said.

The lawsuit names the university, two university police officers and a university police detective lieutenant as defendants.

The lawsuit includes a detailed timeline of Stewart’s final hours and the Brandeis police response to the incident.

Last fall, Stewart experienced “growing anxiety,” recording in a journal that they felt “excessively anxious” and “drowning in school.” According to the complaint, concentration became difficult due to their depression.

On December 4, Stewart decided to commit suicide. The decision came after they believed they had failed the test, according to the lawsuit. They left their hostel shortly after 5 a.m. on the morning of December 5. At some point, either before or after they left the dorm, Stewart took “various prescription and over-the-counter medications,” according to the complaint.

They came to a line of trees near the Three Chapels on the Brandeis campus.

“Eli wrote a series of text messages to his loved ones and at 5:29 a.m. began an audio recording of what they intended to mark the time period before his death,” the lawsuit states.

The document continued: “Although they explain in their recording that they did not intend to record their actual death, Eli’s phone ended up recording the next 11 hours and 24 minutes, until approximately 4:53 p.m. As a result, the tape captured Eli’s last conversation. hours of consciousness and also recorded their breathing sounds even after they had stopped talking.”

The recording shows that Stewart had changed his mind about taking his own life, according to the lawsuit. Shortly after 8:30 a.m., Stewart begins screaming for help, yelling that they are in trouble and can’t move, and begging for help from the school’s volunteer EMS.

“Eli screams numerous times over the next 48 minutes,” the complaint states. “The last call for help was made at approximately 9:17 a.m.”

The lawsuit alleges that the professor called campus police shortly before 9:10 a.m. on Dec. 5, 2023, to report a “person lying in the woods.” The professor reported that the person was moving his arms, and the scientist noted that the place was “a bit strange for lying down.”

Officer Kimberly Carter, the patrol officer in charge of the day shift that day and one of the defendants in the case, took the call and told the professor the department would look into it, suggesting it might be a homeless woman, according to the lawsuit. But Carter made no note of the professor’s report in the dispatch log, despite being required to do so by state law, the lawsuit alleges.

She told her colleague, Officer Thomas Espada, another defendant in the suit, about the call, but he also did not record it, according to the suit.

The lawsuit alleges that Carter failed to respond to messages in a timely manner, waiting more than an hour before taking any action.

“Had she done so, she would have literally heard Eli’s screams for help,” the complaint states.

When Carter did act, “what she did was grossly and grossly negligent,” the lawsuit alleges.

The complaint cites the university’s own internal investigation, which says the video shows that shortly after 10:15 a.m., Carter drove a police car down a road that didn’t even pass the location the professor described in the phone call. According to the complaint, Carter “never got out of her car or even stopped, instead just driving down the road and then driving off.”

Carter then reported to Espada that no one was lying in the woods, the complaint states. Shortly before noon, less than two hours after Carter drove the wrong way, according to the lawsuit, Stewart’s mother, Alice, called Brandeis police to report Stewart missing. She told Espada that Stewart’s neighbor had contacted her and thought Eli might have harmed himself.

But the lawsuit alleges that Espada and Carter were unable to connect Alice’s call to an earlier report that someone was lying in the woods, and because the professor’s report was not recorded, “no one looking for Eli knew about that earlier call.” .

At approximately 1:40 p.m., Brandeis police began looking for Stewart, asking for his cell phone. Around 5 p.m., campus police asked a police dog to help with the search. At about 8 p.m., a state trooper found Stewart’s body lying in a swampy, wooded area near Harlan Chapel “a few feet from the tree line, exactly where the professor said he had seen a person lying on the ground hours before.” Stewart was pronounced dead at a local hospital shortly before 10:15 p.m

The lawsuit describes Stewart as someone who has been an advocate for people with disabilities and the LGBT community. In 2020, Stewart spoke at the Texas State Capitol and spoke “against the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Board’s rule changes that would have allowed social workers to turn away clients based on their disability, sexual orientation or gender identity.” litigation.

They founded a non-profit organization for the education of the disabled and were the plaintiff in a complaint that alleged the Austin School District failed to satisfy perform federal assessments for individualized education plans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Texas, Stewart participated in a youth theater group and served on the board of their synagogue’s youth group, according to the lawsuit, and “was described as instrumental in keeping the youth group active during the COVID lockdown,” according to the lawsuit.

They also struggled with anxiety and depression and experienced suicidal thoughts throughout high school. That struggle continued at Brandeis, where Stewart was a neuroscience major.

The lawsuit includes several counts, including those alleging wrongful death and negligence, as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress. The plaintiffs are seeking a trial and damages, but beyond that, Stewart’s family wants to make sure “nothing like this ever happens again” on any college campus, their attorney, Cooper, said.

“The various failures here just compiled one after the other,” he said.

Danny McDonald can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.