BOSTON — A former dean at a Boston highschool identified affectionately by college students as “Rev” has been ordered by a federal decide to pay greater than $10 million in damages to a former pupil he was convicted of making an attempt to kill in a dispute over drug gross sales.
The default judgment Friday in opposition to former English Excessive Faculty Dean Shaun Harrison contains $7.5 million in damages for ache, struggling and emotional misery; $2.5 million in punitive damages; and greater than $80,000 for the sufferer’s medical payments.
Harrison was convicted in state courtroom in 2018 of assault and different costs, and sentenced to as much as 26 years in jail.
Harrison, who had a background as a neighborhood organizer and youth minister, was dean of teachers, a job that required retaining order and mentoring college students, in accordance with testimony at trial.
However he was main a double life, authorities mentioned. He had ties to the violent Latin Kings gang, recruited college students to promote medication for him, and saved a gun at his condo.
Harrison denied the costs, telling a Boston tv station that he “by no means lived a double life.”
The sufferer, who had been recruited by Harrison to promote marijuana, was 17 when he was shot at the back of the top at point-blank vary on a snowy Boston road in March 2015.
The bullet barely missed the sufferer’s mind stem and carotid artery, however shattered his jaw. He underwent two surgical procedures, had his jaw wired shut for 9 months, stays paralyzed on half of his face, suffers from facial neuropathy, listening to loss, and requires weights on his eyelids to assist with opening and shutting his eyes, in accordance with courtroom paperwork. He continues to expertise ache from the bullet that continues to be lodged in his head and developed an dependancy to opioids prescribed for the ache.
No lawyer was listed for Harrison within the civil case filed by the sufferer in 2019.
It is unclear whether or not the sufferer will ever get any cash from Harrison.
“The judgment in opposition to Mr. Harrison as a person will guarantee that he’s by no means capable of revenue from any endeavors when he’s launched from jail, together with promoting the rights to this story for publication,” the plaintiff’s lawyer, John Martin mentioned in an electronic mail Saturday.
The Boston Public Faculties was additionally named as a defendant, however the decide dismissed claims in opposition to the system. That ruling is being appealed, Martin mentioned.
“Boston Public Faculties was completely dismissive of pupil security and grossly negligent when it allowed a predator to have a place of belief and authority at that college after a number of incidents that ought to have resulted in his termination,” he wrote.
