Ex-Student Who Reported Threat Sues School District

By ANNA GORMAN

Nov. 22, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

OXNARD — A former Hueneme High School student who told campus administrators in confidence that a classmate was planning to kill students and teachers has sued the school district for revealing her identity to the classmate.

Elizabeth Goodall, 20, alleges that the district acted negligently and is asking for damages in excess of $25,000, including medical expenses and loss of educational opportunity. Goodall said she dropped out of school in May 1999, about a month before graduation, because school administrators said they could not guarantee her safety.

Goodall said Tuesday that her former classmate, Megan O’Brien, “threatens to kill me one day and then beat the heck out of me the next.”

O’Brien, 17, said Tuesday she was angry that Goodall had reported her to school officials because she got expelled. She denied making any threats against Goodall, but said her friends might have. O’Brien said she didn’t think Goodall or anyone else would take her seriously.

Oxnard Union High School District officials refused to comment.

In May 1999, a few days after the shootings at Columbine High School, Goodall said O’Brien invited her to participate in a similar attack and asked her to help get the guns.

At first, Goodall said, she thought her friend was kidding. But when O’Brien produced a written plan with details about guns, bombs and getaway cars, Goodall said, she believed O’Brien was serious.

“She went on and on about how she wanted to kill all these people execution-style,” Goodall said. “It freaked me out.”

She showed the note to her mother, Joni Goodall, who said she immediately called the school and the police.

O’Brien said Tuesday the whole plan was a joke. “I have a sick sense of humor,” she said. “I made up some stupid things.”

But in the wake of the shootings in Littleton, Colo., copycat threats and bomb scares were rampant and school officials were encouraging students to report all threats.

Elizabeth Goodall said she signed a document at school detailing what her friend had told her, with the understanding the district would keep her name a secret.

“I didn’t want her to know I ratted on her,” she said. “If she was crazy enough to make that threat, then Lord knows what would happen if she knew.”

But about two weeks later, Goodall said, she found out school administrators had not kept their promise. “All my friends turned on me,” she said. “I was facing a wall of people all accusing me of being a narc.”

Goodall said she stormed into the school office and demanded to know how the students had found out she had snitched. She said administrators told her they had accidentally failed to block out her name when they gave O’Brien her expulsion notice.

When Joni Goodall came to pick up her daughter at school that day, she said the administrators asked her how soon she could move out of state. “I was furious,” she said. “They lied to my face. They guaranteed me they would never release her name, and they did.”

Soon afterward, Elizabeth Goodall moved to Virginia to stay with relatives but returned to Oxnard about four months later. She said in her lawsuit she has received numerous threats, mostly by telephone.

The lawsuit is probably the first of its kind, said Ron Wenkart, who sits on the board of directors at the California Council of School Attorneys.

If the case is decided in Goodall’s favor, Wenkart said, it will send a message to school administrators throughout California that they need to be extremely careful.

“They have a job to do, and they’ve failed to do it,” said Joni Goodall. “They’ve ruined my daughter’s life and they’ve jeopardized my daughter and my family.”

The state Education Code does not explicitly require districts to keep students’ names confidential if they are witnesses in expulsion cases, but Goodall’s attorney said district officials had an ethical responsibility to his client.

“This student was threatening people’s lives,” said Robert Bartosh, who filed the civil suit last week in Ventura County Superior Court. “They weren’t supposed to divulge her name.”

Goodall has not finished high school and is a grocery store cashier. O’Brien plans to graduate in June from another school.