“Brandeis University and its safety office failed Eli Stuart in almost every way possible,” Howard M. Cooper, who represents Stuart’s family in the suit, said during a recent telephone interview. “Eli should be alive today.”

The Waltham facility and its officers left Stuart “to die alone and in agony for hours as he screamed for help and made it clear that he did not want to die,” the lawsuit alleges.

“Eli’s calls for help were picked up by their phone, which recorded what was happening,” the complaint states. “Had the defendants acted in time, Eli would have lived.”

In a statement Thursday, Brandeis said Stuart was “a beloved member of the Brandeis community and their loss has been deeply felt across campus.”

“We offer our deepest sympathies to their family,” the university said. “Their friends, roommates, teachers and colleagues are all mourning the passing. Brandeis has provided resources and support to all who have been affected by the tragic loss of Eli.”

Nothing is more important to the school than the safety and security of its students, Brandeis said, and the school employs “caring, skilled and dedicated professionals who support our students every day.”

“In accordance with the best practices in higher education, Brandeis has multidisciplinary safety resources available to all members of the community,” the statement said.

The suit names as defendants the university, two of the university’s police officers and a university police detective lieutenant.

The lawsuit provides a detailed timeline of Stuart’s final hours and Brandeis police’s handling of the incident.

Last fall, Stuart experienced “increasing anxiety,” reflecting in his diary that he felt “overwhelmed with anxiety” and “drowning at school.” Concentration became difficult because of their depression, according to the complaint.

On December 4, Stuart decided to die by suicide. The decision came after they believed they had failed a test, according to the lawsuit. They left their home shortly after 5 a.m. on the morning of December 5. At some point, either before or after they left the home, Stuart took “various prescription and over-the-counter medications,” according to the complaint.

They went to a line of trees near the Three Chapels on the Brandeis campus.

“Eli wrote a series of texts to her loved ones and at 5:29 a.m. began to audio record what they intended to be the time period leading up to their deaths,” the lawsuit states.

The filing continued: “While explaining in their recording that they had no intention of recording their actual death, Eli’s phone was ultimately recorded for the next 11 hours and 24 minutes until approximately 4:53 p.m. Therefore, the recording caught Eli’s last. conscious hours and recorded their breathing sounds even after they had stopped talking.”

The recording shows Stuart changed his mind about ending their life, according to the suit. Shortly after 8:30, Stuart starts screaming for help, yelling that they are in trouble and can’t move and begging for help from the school’s volunteer emergency medical service.

“Eli screams numerous times over the next 48 minutes,” the complaint states. “Their last call for help was at approximately 9:17 a.m.”

The lawsuit claims a teacher called campus police shortly before 9:10 a.m. on Dec. 5, 2023, to report a “human being lying in the woods.” The teacher reported that the person was moving their hands and the scholar noted that the location was “kind of a weird area to lie in.”

Officer Kimberly Carter, a patrol officer who was in charge of the day shift that day and one of the defendants in the suit, took the call and told the teacher that the department would take a look, while speculating that it could have been someone homeless, according to the lawsuit. But Carter failed to note the teacher’s report in the dispatch log, despite being required to do so by state law, the lawsuit alleges.

She told her colleague, Officer Thomas Espada, another defendant in the suit, about the call, but he didn’t record it either, according to the suit.

The suit alleges Carter failed to respond to the report in a timely manner, waiting over an hour before taking any action.

“Had she done so, she would have literally heard Eli’s cries for help,” the complaint states.

When Carter acted, “what he did was grossly and grossly negligent,” the lawsuit alleges.

The complaint cites the university’s internal investigation, which said the video showed that shortly after 10:15 a.m., Carter drove a police car down a road that failed to even pass the location the professor described- o during his phone call. Carter, according to the complaint, “never got out of his car or stopped his car, but just drove down the road and then drove off.”

Carter then reported to Espada that there was no one lying in the woods, the complaint alleges. Just before noon, less than two hours after Carter drove the wrong way, according to the lawsuit, Stuart’s mother, Alice, called Brandeis police to report Stuart missing. She told Espada that Stuart’s roommate contacted her and thought Eli might have hurt himself.

But the lawsuit alleges that Espada and Carter failed to connect Alice’s call with the earlier report of someone lying in the woods, and because the teacher’s report was not recorded, “no one looking for Eli knew about that earlier call.”

Around 1:40 p.m., Brandeis police began searching for Stuart by pinging his cell phone. Around 5 p.m., campus police requested a police dog to help with the search. Around 8 p.m., a state trooper found Stuart’s body lying in the marshy, wooded area near Harlan Chapel “a few feet from the tree line, exactly where the professor had reported seeing a human being lying on the ground,” a few hours earlier. Stuart was pronounced dead at a local hospital shortly before 10:15 p.m

Cost describes Stuart as someone who has been an advocate for people with disabilities and the LGBTQ community. In 2020, Stuart spoke at the Texas State Capitol and voiced his “opposition to the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Board’s rule change that allowed social workers to refuse clients based on disability, sexual orientation or gender identity gender”. litigation.

They started a nonprofit for the education of people with disabilities and were plaintiffs in a complaint alleging that the Austin School District failed conduct federally mandated assessments of individualized education plans amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Texas, Stuart was involved in a youth theater group and served on the board of their synagogue’s youth group and “have been described as instrumental in keeping the youth group active throughout the COVID lockdown,” according to the process.

They also struggled with anxiety and depression and experienced suicidal thoughts throughout high school. Those struggles continued at Brandeis, where Stuart was a doctor of neuroscience.

The lawsuit includes a number of counts, including wrongful death and negligent as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress. The plaintiffs are seeking a lawsuit and damages, but in addition, Stuart’s family wants to make sure “nothing like this happens again” on any college campus, their attorney, Cooper, said.

“The various failures here were just compiled, one after another,” he said.

Danny McDonald can be reached at [email protected]. Follow L @Danny__McDonald.