The mother of a 13-year-old high school basketball player who drowned in the East River while attending an after-school football game has filed a lawsuit alleging the city failed to supervise her son.
According to the lawsuit, Laquana Badger Godfrey, mother of tragically deceased Kavion Brown Godfrey, claims that her son drowned in October due to “gross negligence” on the part of the Department of Education, the Public Schools Athletic Association and the head coach. The lawsuit follows a notice of claim indicating the family will seek $40 million in damages.
“It's like living a nightmare every day,” Godfrey told The Washington Post recently, nearly a year after her son's death.
“It's unbelievable, it's heartbreaking and my heart is completely broken,” she said. “I saw my son leaving for school on Friday morning and I haven't seen him alive since.”
“Someone has to be held accountable. My son is gone and no one has any answers.”
The city declined to comment on the newly filed lawsuit.
On Oct. 20, Godfrey got a call from Kavion, a freshman at the Lower East Side Preparatory School, asking if he could come with the basketball team to watch the school's football team play at a nearby park.
The mother of four boys didn't give permission until Kavion handed the phone over to basketball coach Joseph Assad, who is also a defendant in her lawsuit.
“'Don't worry,'” Godfrey recalled his coach assuring him. “'Cavion will be with us. We'll travel as a group.'”
Later, Coach Joe took Kavion and his basketball team to an after-school football game at the John V. Lindsay East River Park track, just a few blocks from their Alphabet City home.
But despite the coach's promises, the 13-year-old boy was “left in the water adjacent to the park and tragically drowned,” the lawsuit alleges.
“He was nowhere to be found,” Godfrey said of the coach.
“My son was not with you and that is what ultimately led to his death,” she told Assad.
Kavion's body was found a week later, two miles downstream.
Last year, while police were still searching for their son's body in the river, his parents blamed the Ministry of Education for his death.
Assad did not respond to The Post's messages left at a number listed under his name.
“Mr. Kavion was a polite, well-behaved and intelligent young man, outstanding in many ways,” Godfrey told The Post.
According to their mother, all three of his younger brothers looked up to their father as a role model and have been heartbroken since his death.
“My son was my world, and now he's gone,” Godfrey said.
In addition to financial damages, Godfrey said he still wants truth and closure. He told The Washington Post that he hasn't heard from anyone in the city since his son's death, and even police investigators have not responded to his requests for information.
“After this happened, I told my children [DOE] “I'm not going to travel because I don't trust it's safe,” Godfrey said.
One of her sons, a fifth-grader, asked if he could sign up for the school's soccer team, and she said no.
“I don't trust the Department of Energy anymore,” Godfrey said.
“Parents with children under the Department of Education's supervision should be able to trust the promises of teachers, coaches and administrators,” Godfrey's lawyers, Sandy Rubenstein and Mark Silian, said in a statement.
“The coach promised to be with the child and monitor the child but clearly did not do so. If the coach had kept his promise to this grieving mother, this tragedy would never have happened.”
In a notice of claim, a legal prelude to filing suit against the city agency, Godfrey said he intends to seek $40 million in damages, but no specific figure was given in the lawsuit filed Friday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
But more than anything, she said, she wants accountability for what happened to her oldest son — and to make sure what happened to her never happens to other children.
“We entrust the lives of our children to the Department of Education, so there needs to be some accountability, and it's devastating when one of our children doesn't come home,” she told The Washington Post.
“It makes me so sad because something has to happen.”
