A teenager who died at a boarding school in Utah had been sick for weeks before her tragic passing, but the school management had trained staffers to ignore student complaints about sickness, according to former staff members.
Seventeen-year-old Taylor Goodridge collapsed at the Diamond Ranch Academy, a school for at-risk/difficult youth in Hurricane, Utah, on December 20, 2022. She died later that day at a nearby hospital.
While the county coroner’s office has not released an official cause of death, the family believes Goodridge died of sepsis, a severe response to an often-life-threatening infection, according to a lawsuit filed in December.
The Health and Human Services Department in Utah placed the school’s license on conditional status, meaning it can remain open as the Hurricane Police department and the agency investigates the teenager’s death. Authorities said the school management is cooperating with investigators.
Goodridge’s father, Dean Goodridge, filed a lawsuit in a federal court on December 30, suing the Diamond Ranch Academy for allegedly ignoring the severity of his daughter’s sickness and telling her to deal with it and take aspirin for the pain.
Many of the school’s former staff members testified in the lawsuit that the school management was aware of the girl’s illness for months but did nothing to help her.
The school’s attorney said the faculty disagrees with many aspects of the lawsuit and the allegations made against them by former staffers, but they could not respond because of federal privacy laws.
Several former staff members said that although Goodridge was sick on several occasions in the three months before her death, she was not transported to a hospital to get evaluated.
Tianamarie Govan, a night shift supervisor until October 20, said that Goodridge vomited at night on several occasions, but officials did not do anything. She said that Goodridge complained of severe pain in her stomach and lower back at the time.
Govan claimed that the teenager had a high fever one night, but staff refused to let her use the thermometer to check her temperature.
Matt Thomas, who worked as a youth mentor at the school until late December, said that on December 19, Goodridge refused to go for lunch because she was too sick.
School records also show that Goodridge vomited on at least three days in the week of her death.
A former staffer said the girl vomited several times a day and complained of bad stomach pains before her death, adding that she had a swollen stomach.
The staff members all said that the school’s management warned them that kids who complained of illness were just looking for attention.
Goodridge’s father said he last saw her on December 16 when he visited her, and she seemed fine. The school called him to say she died from a heart attack on December 20.
Goodridge got sick on December 20, and the school officials decided to take her to the hospital. She became unconscious before transportation, and the school called 911. Responding medics revived her, but she became unconscious again at the hospital and then died.
