Paul Flores, who was the final particular person seen with the 19-year-old Sensible after a Memorial Day weekend get together in 1996, was convicted in October 2022 of murdering her. However her physique has by no means been discovered.
“There isn’t any query that Cal Poly failed our daughter, Kristin Sensible, in a number of methods earlier than and after her tragic homicide by Paul Flores,” the Sensible household stated in an announcement Monday. “Had the college acted correctly, performed an intensive investigation into Flores’ previous regarding conduct, and applied acceptable disciplinary measures, Kristin would doubtless nonetheless be alive at the moment.”
Sensible’s dad and mom, Stan and Denise Sensible, her brother, Matthew Sensible, and her sister, Lindsey Stewart, asserted within the Superior Court docket grievance that they didn’t totally comprehend the college’s failure till its president issued an apology in Might. Their lawsuit, filed Thursday, alleges negligence, wrongful demise and negligent infliction of emotional misery.
The go well with additionally alleges that the errors made by college police allowed Flores to rape different girls within the years after. The household is searching for unspecified damages.
“Cal Poly’s breaches of its authorized obligation embrace however aren’t restricted to the next: It didn’t pursue a lacking particular person case promptly, didn’t interview witnesses well timed, didn’t seal the first suspect’s dorm room as a criminal offense scene, allowed the suspect’s room to be sanitized and cleaned earlier than it was searched, and didn’t search the suspect’s room till sixteen days after Kristin disappeared,” attorneys for the household alleged within the lawsuit.
The college’s police drive didn’t totally examine within the early levels, dismissing her disappearance and ignoring stories it possessed about Flores’ “threatening, stalking, and harassing conduct,” the lawsuit asserts. Kristin Sensible was final seen strolling towards her dormitory with Flores on Might 25, 1996.
“If Cal Poly had correctly acted on these stories, performed an investigation, and appropriately disciplined [Flores], he wouldn’t have been on campus, and due to this fact wouldn’t have been in a position to homicide Kristin,” the lawsuit alleged.
Sensible’s disappearance and the homicide investigation have haunted the Central Coast school group for many years, with billboards interesting for proof to convict her killer. She was legally declared lifeless in 2002.
Two of her pals contacted the college’s police the day after she disappeared. However officers declined to take a report and advised her pals they needed to attend till the Memorial Day weekend was over, in keeping with the lawsuit. They advised Sensible’s mom that Kristin most likely went tenting, regardless of her mom’s insistence that it wasn’t like Kristin to take action, the lawsuit states.
In Might, Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong publicly said: “We’re very sorry for what the Sensible household has endured. What they’ve been by means of is unimaginably heartbreaking, and I really feel for them in methods I can’t categorical with phrases. Whereas it’s a totally different administration now than was in place in 1996, we acknowledge that issues ought to had been completed in another way — and I personally want that they’d.”
The college has declined to touch upon the lawsuit, saying it doesn’t focus on ongoing litigation.
The lawsuit alleges that Cal Poly police had the next stories about Flores in its possession earlier than Sensible disappeared:
- In December 1995, a feminine Cal Poly scholar filed a college police report alleging Flores had been harassing her, together with climbing the trellis of the scholar’s house constructing to spy on her from her balcony. Cal Poly police apprehended Flores on the location and recognized him because the “offender,” the lawsuit alleges.
- In January 1996, Flores was reported for vandalizing Cal Poly grounds and property whereas intoxicated. That very same month, he was required to attend a “Mediation/Info Assembly” as a result of he had allegedly harassed a workers member on the college, in keeping with the lawsuit.
- In March 1996, three feminine Cal Poly college students filed stories to school police accusing Flores of harassment and stalking. In keeping with the lawsuit, Flores repeatedly telephoned them for six weeks and stuffed their answering machine with silent hang-up calls. They, too, alleged that Flores had climbed on their balcony and tried to interrupt into their house in December 1995, in keeping with the lawsuit.
As well as, the lawsuit alleges that in December 1994, Flores was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery, and Cal Poly’s police division had entry to the California Legislation Enforcement Methods database that features these information.
“After turning into conscious of 5 stories of Flores’ harassing, stalking, and violent conduct, any cheap college would have engaged in a disciplinary course of associated to Flores,” in keeping with the lawsuit. “An affordable college would have expelled, or at the least suspended, Flores.”
The Smarts’ lawsuit stated Cal Poly’s failures allowed Paul Flores to sexually assault and harm a number of girls throughout the 25 years main as much as his April 13, 2021, arrest. Two of these girls testified they had been drugged and sexually assaulted in Los Angeles County in 2008 and 2011, respectively.
Robert Sanger, Paul Flores’ protection lawyer, concludes his case throughout closing arguments in Flores’ homicide trial on Oct. 5, 2022, in Monterey County Superior Court docket in Salinas.
(Laura Dickinson / San Luis Obispo Tribune)
Of their instances, the prosecutor famous Flores had supplied to present the ladies rides house after assembly them, solely to drug and repeatedly rape them at his home.
Flores is serving 25 years in jail. Final 12 months, a gaggle of scientists revealed knowledge that they are saying confirmed indications of human stays within the soil of his mom’s property.
