Hartford School Didn't Notice Student Was Dying In Gym Class: Lawsuit

HARTFORD, CT — A student at the Sports and Medical Sciences Academy public school in Hartford became increasingly ill during gym class before dying on the school's watch, according to a lawsuit filed against the city of Hartford and the Hartford Board of Education, which was first obtained by the Hartford Courant.

The student, Ethan Hernandez-Reyes, was in gym class on January 13, 2022 when the teacher noticed he didn't look well, the lawsuit said.

Hernandez-Reyes went to sit on a gym mat after warm-ups and before the class began playing floor hockey, the lawsuit stated, adding that the teacher told him "to rejoin the class if he felt better, or if he felt worse, she would send him to the nurse."

Later, the teacher found the boy unresponsive on the mat. Attempts to resuscitate him failed, and he was pronounced dead of a fentanyl overdose at the hospital hours later, according to the lawsuit.

"The teacher failed to send Ethan to the school nurse, she failed to check on him during the class, and she failed to get prompt emergency medical assistance," Paul Iannaccone of RisCassi & Davis, who represents the boy's mother, said in a statement shared with the Courant. (Read the full report at the Hartford Courant.)

Patch reached out to the Sports and Medical Sciences Academy for comment on Tuesday. In a statement to NBC Connecticut, the Hartford Public Schools said Tuesday evening that it "remains committed to creating safe, nurturing educational environments. The safety and wellbeing of our students and staff is our top priority. Due to the pending litigation, we will not issue further comment."

In a 2022 Patch news story, it stated that a seventh-grade student died after exposure to suspected fentanyl at the school. Police found about 40 small bags of fentanyl inside two classrooms and the gymnasium at the school, NBC CT reports. Two other pupils were hospitalized after exposure to the suspected fentanyl.

Immediately after the student's death, Mayor Luke Bronin said via NBC CT that, “Our city grieves for this child lost, for his loved ones, his friends, his teachers, and the entire SMSA family."

Bronin, after the child's death, made a plea, according to WTNH News 8, saying that fentanyl is a "poison," and that parents need to tell their children that "if anybody offers or suggests that they experiment with or ingest some substance they think is a drug or they don’t know what it is, don’t do it, stay a mile away and for God’s sake please report it."

The Sport and Medical Sciences Academy is a public school that integrates sport and medical sciences into the college prep core curriculum, according to its webpage on the Greater Hartford Regional School Choice Office.