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Lawyer For Avonte Oquendo's Family Says School's Response Was "Even Worse Than We Thought"
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Dec 28, 2013
Modified Dec 29, 2013
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Jen Chung / Gothamist
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Dec 28, 2013
Modified Dec 29, 2013
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It's been nearly three months since 14-year-old mute autistic boy Avonte Oquendo went missing from his Queens public school, despite the city's ongoing efforts to locate him. Now, new information from the Department of Education's investigation into the incident have surfaced that suggests the school handled his going missing poorly, and that administrators failed to contact police until Avonte had been missing for more than an hour.
Attorney David Perecman, who represents Avonte's family, says the DOE report regarding the teen's October 4th disappearance found that though three adults were watching Avonte's special education class at the Riverview School in Long Island City on that day, he was able to separate from the class unnoticed. The report, according to Perecman, also noted that Avonte walked by the main security desk twice before exiting out of a door that had been left ajar.
Perecman says that according to the report, Avonte's teachers noticed he was missing a few minutes after he exited the building and notified the assistant principal about fifteen minutes later. The assistant principal ordered a sweep of the perimeter, but a full lockdown of the school was not put into place for an hour and a half, and the report does not note police being called until an hour after the teen went missing. "It's even worse than we thought," Perecman told the Daily News.
In addition to the lockdown delay and delay in notifying the authorities, a safety agent allegedly told school administrators she saw Avonte "run up the stairs," though a security video recorded him leaving the building; the video also recorded that same agent closing the door out of which he escaped. Avonte's mother, Vanessa Fontaine, told NBC News that if the agent "would have just got up and went outside and ran after him instead of closing the door and acting like nothing happened, my son would be here with me, not lost out in the street somewhere." Administrators did not have access to the security cameras at the time, and were unable to determine that Avonte had left the building.
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autism
avonte oquendo
long island city
nypd
queens
Rebecca Fishbein
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