WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The family of a 19-year-old student with autism will receive a $2 million settlement from the School District of Palm Beach County more than a year after he choked on a chicken nugget and died.
Members of the Palm Beach County School Board approved the settlement Wednesday.
Kedar Williams was rushed to the hospital in August 2019 after choking during lunch at William T. Dwyer Community High School. He had a form of autism that made him mostly non-verbal, and he also had a condition that made him prone to choking.
When his mother dropped him off that day at school, she said the school didn't inform her they didn't have a paraprofessional to supervise Kedar. Instead, he was allowed to eat chicken nuggets unattended and died after choking.
"What he would tend to do would be to eat a lot of food at one time," Salesia Smith-Gordon, an attorney representing the boy's father, told WPTV in 2019. "Then it would go into the lungs, and that would be catastrophic."
An aide was supposed to be assigned only to Williams. But video showed the aide was tending to another student when Williams choked.
"The school failed," Smith-Gordon said at the time. "It did not follow the protocols it was supposed to."
WPTV spoke with attorney Sia Baker-Barnes, who represents the boy's mother, Megan Williams.
"I have been handling these kinds of cases for 20 years, but they are never easy," she said.
Smith-Gordon, who represents Jeffrey Williams, said nobody from the school district has contacted the family.
"They have not heard from a soul," she said.
The school district released the following statement Thursday:
"While no amount of money will ever take away the pain caused by this tragedy, the School District of Palm Beach County hopes that the settlement reached with the Williams family will help to ease the burden of this tremendous loss."
As a condition of the settlement, the school board has agreed to develop a mandatory training program named the Kedar Elijah Exceptional Student Education Training program.
"This training will be for the prevention of this happening to another child," Smith-Gordon said.
Both attorneys said their clients' emotions are still very raw and no amount of money can ease that pain.