CHICAGO, Oct. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Corboy & Demetrio has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against two school districts for the death of Jenna Menias, a 6-year-old girl struck and killed on Sept. 8, 2026, seconds after being dropped off by the districts’ jointly operated school bus.
The wrongful death lawsuit names Lincoln-Way Community High School District 210 and Frankfort School District 157-C as defendants. Jenna, a second grader at District 157-C, was being transported by a school bus operated by District 210 pursuant to an intergovernmental agreement between the districts. The lawsuit was filed by Corboy & Demetrio Partner Daniel S. Kirschner who represents the estate.
“Districts 210 and 157-C had every opportunity to prevent this unimaginable tragedy from happening to Jenna and they failed her and the Menias family at every turn,” according to Kirschner. “As this complaint explains, safeguard, upon safeguard, upon safeguard were consciously disregarded not just in real time by the driver, but by two school districts charged with the responsibility of putting the safety of this child first,” Kirschner added.
Several weeks before Jenna was killed, her mom expressed concern to District 157-C that the bus route and drop-off procedures, which amounted to Jenna being dropped off alone, hundreds of feet from her house, and on the opposite side of the street without sidewalks or a defined crosswalk, were not safe.
She demanded a change. In an email obtained by Kirschner, the district responded with a denial of her request. Jenna’s mother made the same request of the district in 2022 relating to her son’s transportation. Likewise, the district, in an email, denied that request. According to police reports, the driver, employed by District 210, was a substitute who had only recently obtained his school bus license and had never driven this route before.
Onboard video, which was obtained by Corboy & Demetrio, reveals that Jenna was off the bus and in plain sight in front of the bus within the roadway when the bus driver, without using his exterior mirrors or looking out the front windshield, proceeded forward, striking Jenna. The video also shows the driver driving the bus while looking down at a piece of paper in his right hand.
“Not only was Jenna’s death entirely preventable, but it was also entirely foreseeable when an inexperienced and clearly inattentive substitute driver is put behind the wheel of a school bus filled with 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds, to drive an unfamiliar route with a drop-off routine that the districts were aware was unsafe,” Kirschner stated. “We discovered, that just hours before Jenna was killed, an internal email with the subject line ‘Challenging afternoon’ was written by District 210’s Director of Transportation lamenting that they have had a lot of late call offs from drivers, and that a department staffing shortage ‘makes a challenging day – worse,'” Kirschner said.
“This lawsuit was brought by the Menias family to get answers, to hold the districts accountable, and, most of all, to make sure that their worst nightmare never happens to another family,” Kirschner explained.
Case: 2026L011354 filed in Cook Co. Circuit Court on 9-22-26
Media Contact: Helen Lucaitis, Esq., Corboy & Demetrio CMO, 312-346-3191 (office); 312-550-2077 (cell); HHL@corboydemetrio.com.
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SOURCE Corboy & Demetrio
