NEW ORLEANS — The 16-year-old was crushed and critically injured last week, when a large section of a live oak fell on him in Jackson Square while he was visiting New Orleans with his family according to his attorney Morris Bart.
“They are tourists, and they are a family from the San Antonio area that had just arrived in New Orleans,” Bart told WWL-TV.
The boy’s family is asking for privacy and prayers, Bart added.
“At this point at the family’s request, I can disclose that he’s had a severe brain injury and he’s still in ICU at a local hospital.”
Bart is pursuing legal action against the city at the family’s request. He said an area should have been roped off around the tree after a smaller limb snapped off 10 days earlier.
“Videos and pictures we have of June 27, when the limb fell, clearly, clearly show the tree is rotted and in distress,” Bart said. “At that point the city is on notice that there’s a defect in the tree and immediate action is required.”
City spokesman John Lawson released this statement about the June 27 incident.
"The mature live oak was inspected by Parks and Parkways arborists on June 27 while performing clean up to remove a large failed limb (referred to as a leader). The tree was again inspected on June 28. The determination then was made to perform additional pruning on a smaller dead limb and reevaluate the health and balance of the tree once specialized equipment was made available to access the square. When an immediate risk for failure is observed through arborist inspection, a tree is removed immediately. Our arborists concluded, based on the two remaining sections of the tree, that there was not an elevated risk of additional large limb or whole tree failure."
Bart has investigators canvasing Jackson Square, interviewing French Quarter artists and store owners about the June 27 incident.
“The fact that they didn’t rope off that tree, didn’t put up any yellow tape, I believe is unconscionable and from a legal standard in my opinion it is gross negligence,” Bart said. “You don’t have to be a lawyer to realize that.”
Mayor LaToya Cantrell made her first public statement about the tree incident at her weekly media briefing Wednesday morning.
“My heart and our prayers continue to go out to the family,” Cantrell said. “I know Friday’s incident in Jackson Square was something that was unexpected and definitely unfortunate in the city.”
Cantrell also addressed whether the tree should have been roped off after the first tree limb fell.
“There’s always room to go deeper, to go the extra mile because what we’ve learned is that just you never know and even as the tree was inspected prior to this incident, it was inspected giving us no indication of an imminent danger of collapsing.”
Morris Bart hopes what happened to his 16-year-old client is not an indication of the health of the city’s live oaks, some of which are hundreds of years old. The tree that fell in Jackson Square was 85 years old.
“I like to run in Audubon Park under the live oak trees and yeah, I do have heightened concern after what happened,” Bart said. “I as a New Orleanian, along with everyone else have a belief that we’re safe under the majestic beauty of these live oak trees. But if we’re not, that’s a game changer.”
Bart is expected to file a lawsuit against the city as early as next week.
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