A pre-existing brain abnormality — rather than any blow she received during an alleged school bullying incident — was responsible for the death of 12-year-old Khimberly Zavaleta, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has concluded, classifying the manner of death as natural causes, according to NBC News.
On the official death certificate, the examiner entered "spontaneously ruptured cerebellar arteriovenous malformation" as the cause, referring to a congenital disorder in which abnormally structured, high-pressure blood vessels in the brain are highly susceptible to sudden rupture, according to NBC News. In a written statement, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Odey Ukpo explained that when an AVM ruptures, the resulting hemorrhage is immediate and can prove fatal within seconds to minutes, according to NBC News.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the family says that on Feb. 17 at Reseda Charter High School, Khimberly intervened when her older sister was being targeted by bullies and was hit in the head with a metal water bottle hurled by another student. Treated and discharged from a hospital on the same day, Khimberly appeared well enough to go home, but her condition deteriorated sharply over the following days; she was eventually transported to UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital, where surgeons operated on her brain and doctors placed her in a medically induced coma — measures that ultimately proved insufficient, as she died on Feb. 25, according to the Los Angeles Times.
While the medical examiner's office acknowledged in its news release that Khimberly had been hit on the back of the head four days prior to her hospitalization, it stopped short of linking that impact to the brain hemorrhage that followed, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Family attorney Robert Glassman pushed back sharply on the examiner's conclusions. "Before this incident, Khimberly was a healthy, vibrant 12-year-old girl with no symptoms, no medical crisis, and no indication that her AVM posed any danger to her life," Glassman said, according to NBC News. "If Khimberly had an underlying condition that made her more vulnerable to injury, that does not excuse the conduct that led to her death."
After Khimberly's death, the Los Angeles Police Department launched a homicide probe, and in April investigators took a juvenile into custody on suspicion of murder, according to the Los Angeles Times. An LAPD spokesperson said there was no update on the investigation's status, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In March, Khimberly's family took legal action against the Los Angeles Unified School District, with a civil suit contending that district staff ignored persistent complaints from the family and failed to shield Khimberly from ongoing harassment, according to the Los Angeles Times. The district said it could not comment on pending litigation, according to the Los Angeles Times. The civil litigation will proceed regardless of the examiner's findings, Glassman said, because the lawsuit targets how the district handled its duty to keep Khimberly safe — a question separate from what ultimately killed her, according to NBC News.