The parents of a Pierson Middle-High School sixth-grader who drowned during a school whitewater rafting trip on the Lehigh River have sued the Sag Harbor Union Free School District, its superintendent, Hampton Jitney Inc. and the rafting outfitter.

The wrongful-death suit, filed on Nov. 2 in New York’s Suffolk County Supreme Court, says the 12-year-old boy, identified in court papers only by the initials C.A.A.G., was thrown into the water on May 27 when his raft capsized at a downed tree near mile marker 99 in East Penn Township at about 4:40 p.m.

The current “pulled, suctioned, and vacuumed” the boy’s head and body under the surface, “pinning him beneath its branches, trapping him, preventing him from resurfacing,” attorney Joel H. Robinson wrote in the complaint. The filing says the child suffered “extreme and unimaginable conscious pain and suffering for several minutes” before he drowned.

Named as plaintiffs are the boy’s father, Cesar Hernan Albarracin Guncay; his mother, Delia Leonor Guncay Morales; and Jorge Ramiro Buestan Sangurima, a co-administrator of the estate. All three live in Suffolk County, New York, according to the complaint. The defendants are the school district, Superintendent Jeff Nichols, Hampton Jitney and Whitewater Rafting Adventures LLC of Nesquehoning.

Who was in the boats

The district sent close to 80 sixth-graders on the overnight class trip, the lawsuit says, splitting the children and 10 teachers among 14 rafts for an outing that was to last several hours. The students were all 11 or 12 years old.

Families were promised “a professional and certified rafting guide in every boat with the minor children,” the complaint says. Instead, the suit alleges, Whitewater Rafting Adventures supplied five guides for the entire group, and those guides shadowed the flotilla from kayaks, “traveling separately in kayaks, and not inside rafts with the students.”

The teachers assigned to supervise were not certified guides and the district knew it, the filing says. The adults, according to the complaint, “did not view, observe, or trek the course ahead of time” to identify hazards before the children launched.

A swollen river and a downed tree

The lawsuit says two scheduled dam releases in the days before the trip had discharged extra water “to create faster-flowing rapids and boost river depths, increasing the difficulty of the course.”

It alleges that none of the four defendants investigated the releases or the downed tree, known to paddlers as a strainer because it lets water pass while catching everything else, and that the outfitter should have canceled the trip or moved it to a different stretch of river.

At least four rafts carrying students and teachers capsized at the strainer, the complaint says.

The suit faults the district and Nichols for hiring Hampton Jitney to select the rafting operator without written consent from parents, and says the superintendent approved, authorized, planned and organized the trip, but did not accompany or supervise the students. Both Hampton Jitney and Whitewater Rafting Adventures were chosen, the complaint says, because each presented itself as having experience and “a strong focus on safety and reliability.”

The claims

The complaint lists eight claims. Three accuse the district and Nichols, Hampton Jitney and Whitewater Rafting Adventures, in turn, of negligence. Two more accuse the district, Nichols and Hampton Jitney of breaking the legal duty known as in loco parentis, Latin for “in place of a parent,” which holds that adults supervising children away from home take on the responsibilities the parents would otherwise have. The three defendants, the filing argues, “assumed the duties, responsibilities, and supervisory authority of the minor children’s parents” for the duration of the trip. The final three claims seek damages on behalf of the boy’s estate, his father and his mother.

The complaint asserts that New York courts have jurisdiction over the Pennsylvania outfitter, because it markets and sells trips in New York and “committed tortious acts outside New York State causing injuries to persons in New York State.”

Plaintiffs served a notice of claim on the district and Nichols on July 17, and the boy’s parents testified at municipal hearings on Oct. 8 under General Municipal Law 50-H, according to the complaint.

The suit seeks compensatory damages exceeding the jurisdictional limits of all lower courts, plus attorneys’ fees and costs.

No responses had been filed as of Friday.