SPOKANE, Wash – The family of a boy who said he was hazed by teammates on the Mead High School football team has filed a $50 million claim against the school district, EWU and others.
The lawsuit stems from an incident at EWU football camp in June 2022.
Parents of the student, who is black, say their son was targeted.
They say several teammates forced their way into his room and carried him downstairs. The suit claims they even walked past a supervisor from Mead who asked what they were up to.
The suit says the boy was taken into a room belonging to one of the Mead coaches, but the coach was not there. The parents say the boy was disoriented by flashing strobe lights and held down on the bed.
They say he was stripped of most of his clothing and that one of the white players said it was “time for [the boy] to pay the price.”
The suit says several of the boys recorded on their phones while others took a massage gun and put it in the boy’s anus.
The family says after the incident, the boy left and went to his sister’s house in Cheney. The suit says no one looked for him or reported he was missing.
The suit says videos of the incident were shared widely aty school.
“The trauma was unbearable,” the suit says.
Previous reporting shows that some Mead coaches and administrators knew of the incident and did not properly report or investigate.
The boy eventually transferred to another school district outside of Spokane.
Other assaults reported
The family says three other black student athletes were targeted at the EWU camp the following year.
One of them suspected the players were planning something, “so he told Mead’s coaching staff these players planned to ‘rape’ him,” the suit says.
The suit says the coaches did not take action so he tried to barricade himself in his room.
The lawsuit says some of the same players attacked the boy with the massage gun in the same way they had done the year before.
Again, the suit says, other players recorded and shared videos of the incident.
The suit says a similar attack happened to another black player t he following day.
“To these young black men, it was clear this behavior was part and parcel of Mead football’s program,” the suit says. “As one player told Mead staff, “If this is the team and this is the coach, then it would ‘just be worse’ to object to racial harassment and assault.”
Mead fired the coach, Keith Stamps, in December 2024. He has since appealed that decision.
The school district said he failed to report and address the allegations.
The Mead principal resigned shortly after.
The lawsuit names three players who it says were ringleaders of the assault and who are now all over 18. It says they caused “emotional and psychological suffering that continues to this day” and that they committed assault and battery.
The suit claims coaches and the school district were negligent in not protecting him.
The lawsuit says the Mead School District discriminated against the boy because of his race and failed to report the abuse.
The suit says EWU did not provide adequate supervision of the students and that the university should have known the teens would be unsupervised.
None of the defendants have yet responded to the federal lawsuit, which was just filed Thursday.
The Mead School District already faces a civil trial in Spokane County Court related to these incidents.
Some of the plaintiffs have settled with the district.
One document indicates the school district agreed to pay one family $800,000. Another was paid $1,000,000 in the settlement agreement.
The remaining portions of the civil case are set to go to trial in May.
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