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A custodian at Lakeside High School is suing the Nine Mile Falls
School District for making her clean up the bloody mess left after a
16-year-old boy shot himself in the head inside the school in 2004. Debbie
Rothwell is seeking unspecified damages for the infliction of emotional
and physical distress from the incident during which Skyler Cullitan
brought a gun to school and killed himself. In her complaint
filed Tuesday in Spokane County Superior Court, Rothwell claims she was
directed to "clean and dump everything." Rothwell's
lawsuit says she finished cleaning the school about 4:15 a.m., and was
then required to return to school in the morning to serve cookies and
coffee to distraught students, staff and parents, as well as to guard
the school gates. "It's really been disturbing to her because she
still has to work in that building where she had to clean up the
remains," said Bill Powell, Rothwell's attorney. She has asked to be
transferred from the building but has been denied, Powell said. The
suit also alleges that Rothwell was told to clean up soot in the
school's entryway after law enforcement detonated a "bomb" found in the
suicide victim's backpack at the school that day. Nine Mile Falls
School District Superintendent Michael Green said Thursday he could not
comment on the litigation, but did say the suspicious device found in
the boy's backpack was not a bomb. "It turned out to be a science experiment," Green said. It
was detonated by law enforcement as a precaution, he said. Neither the
existence of a suspicious device nor its detonation was made public at
the time.The complaint also says that Stevens County sheriff's
detectives – named in the suit along with Sheriff Craig Thayer –
allowed her to pick up Cullitan's backpack after she was told to start
cleaning, even though authorities believed there was a suspicious
device inside. When she discovered that fact later, Rothwell was "shocked and frightened," the suit alleges.
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