DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo. — There are thousands of confidential documents and depositions connected to the shooting at the STEM School in Highlands Ranch in May 2019 that the public has never seen.
The family of Kendrick Castillo, the 18-year-old who was shot and killed in May 2019, learned of the documents and information after suing the school and the school district.
On Wednesday, a hearing was held where John and Maria Castillo fought to have them released to the public.
"We’re fighting to share the truth about what led up to the STEM School shooting," said John Castillo. "Create transparency for all schools."
The Castillo family believes the confidential information they've learned shows a failure in school safety and security practices and protocols.
"What will help future killers is to leave failed security procedures in place so the same thing can happen over and over again," said Dan Caplis, the Castillo's attorney, during opening statements.
The Castillos have all this information that's not available to the public because of the Claire Davis School Safety Act, a statute passed by Colorado legislators in 2015 after Claire Davis was killed by another student at Arapahoe High School.
The act allows victims to sue schools and districts to obtain information that schools previously did not have to release because of governmental immunity laws.
In court on Wednesday, Claire's father, Michael Davis, the architect of the act, and the state senator who sponsored the act testified about its intent.
Davis said their "intent from the very beginning was to disclose the information to make public for the purpose of getting it to experts so lessons could be learned and schools could be made safer."
Douglas County School District and STEM lawyers argued the act is about discovery, not disclosure to the public, and that releasing much of this information would be detrimental to safety and privacy of students and staff.
They worry it could create a road map for other people to cause violence in schools.
"That information just like this courtroom includes, included not disclosing locations of panic buttons, target hardening measures, locations of security cameras, security officer assignments, or information about threat and suicide assessment training and protocols because these could be manipulated," said Gwyneth Whalen, Douglas County School District's attorney. "These are tools that educators use to try to identify a potential risk of harm to educators or staff."
"That's a false narrative," said Castillo. "Our intention isn’t to show vulnerabilities where there's a panic button or anything like that, and that’s part of a big discussion that we should be having."
The specifics of the confidential information were talked about behind closed doors Wednesday afternoon, and Caplis expected the process to go through it will take weeks.
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