Dover, DE (April 29, 2024) – Attorneys from Delaware-headquartered, national law firm Grant & Eisenhofer expressed deep disappointment following the April 21st fatal shooting of an 18-year-old visitor to the Delaware State University campus.

“We have long been concerned that the same gun violence responsible for our client’s devastating injuries during an on-campus shooting in the fall of 2022 would recur because University officials have failed to enact meaningful upgrades to security protocols,” said attorneys from Grant & Eisenhofer, who filed a negligence action (Doe v. Delaware State University et al., No. N23C-11-067) in Delaware Superior Court last November. The attorneys added, “We are dismayed that, through our investigation in this litigation and going back to at least 2007, we have found the University has ignored the need to implement basic, best practices when it comes to safety and security measures.

A litany of prior violent incidents—some fatal—are presented in the Doe v. Delaware State University lawsuit, where the suit alleges, “Defendants took no action to enhance the University’s security or secure the safety of its students, their guests, or other invitees to campus.”  According to the complaint, “Despite knowing that non-student individuals were routinely accessing Campus to attend these parties and that individuals had been shot and killed on prior occasions, Defendants did not take any measures to restrict public access or conduct any security checks of the visitors attending Campus parties. Defendants did not utilize any reasonable and available methods of access control.”  

The suit asserts that the Defendants knew and failed to take the necessary precautions to safeguard Grant & Eisenhofer’s client and all others who were on and around the campus when the September 2022 student government-sponsored outdoor social event—open to the public and widely advertised beyond the University—turned violent. The gunmen, who have not been found, wounded four individuals.

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Steph Rosenfeld
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