A settlement was reached in a lawsuit filed by a Los Angeles couple that alleged four Los Angeles County lifeguards were negligent when they didn’t pull the couple’s son, 17-year-old Enodre Thomas, from a public pool at Jesse Owens Park in Athens in 2013 in time to prevent him from suffering fatal brain damage.
Attorneys for Tremell Thomas and Enger Dodson, father and mother of Enodre Thomas, filed court papers on Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court stating that a conditional resolution of the case was reached. No terms were divulged and it was not immediately clear if the settlement is subject to approval by the Board of Supervisors.
The complaint, filed in June 2014, named as defendants Los Angeles County and lifeguards Bianca Sabrina Garcia, Otto Miguel Gonzalez, Werner Cordova and Sabrina Deyanira Ochoa. The suit alleged the four were not properly trained for their jobs.
According to the suit, Enodre Thomas was pulled from the pool by the lifeguards on June 9, 2013. But they negligently failed to provide him immediate life-saving care, causing him further medical problems, the suit alleged.
Thomas died later of his injuries, including catastrophic brain damage, the suit stated.
According to media reports shortly after the incident, Thomas’ family members said the teen was under water for more than five minutes before lifeguards came to his rescue. Thomas’ sister watched her brother jump into the water, then spotted him at the bottom of the pool several minutes later and alerted lifeguards, according to the media reports.
Thomas and his family have frequented the pool for years, the reports said. He had just graduated from high school and planned to attend the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in the fall of 2013.
