The city removed a mentally ill 13-year-old NYC girl from her family and then allegedly failed to properly monitor her as she repeatedly ran away from foster placements — before she died after jumping from the Brooklyn Bridge.
After the girl’s death, the Administration for Children’s Services allegedly attempted to conceal its failures by backdating records and reports, her family claims in a lawsuit.
“ACS killed Jade Smith,” her mother, Terri Nimmo, alleged in court filings.
Jade Smith, 13, died after jumping from the Brooklyn Bridge in January 2023, more than four months after she was separated from her family by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, according to a lawsuit.
“Over the course of ACS’s 20-month assault on the Nimmo family, the Nimmos lost their home, their jobs, and their 13-year-old daughter,” the lawsuit states. “They will never recover.”
Nearly a year after Jade’s death, an ACS caseworker made an unannounced visit to the family’s Brooklyn home and asked whether Jade was “out for the moment,” her mother, Terri Nimmo, 35, said in court filings.
The encounter triggered weeks of nightmares and panic attacks for Nimmo, the lawsuit alleges.
Jade was “an extremely gifted, creative, passionate child” and a “prolific artist” who was constantly drawing and painting, her family said in their federal lawsuit against the city and several ACS employees.
She also suffered from severe mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative identity disorder, and depression, which required multiple psychiatric hospitalizations beginning when she was 9, according to legal papers.
Jade experienced hallucinations, including seeing a faceless “black figure” following her at school, and frequently woke up screaming, believing she was covered in bugs, the lawsuit states. By age 12, she had attempted suicide multiple times.
One alleged delusion would ultimately alter the family’s life.
In July 2022, Jade told Nimmo that someone had entered her bedroom at night and groped her, later accusing her stepfather — who worked overnight shifts as a security guard — of being responsible, according to the lawsuit.
The teen, who had a significant history of mental illness, repeatedly ran away from foster placements, her family said in court papers.
After Jade first made the allegation, her mother informed the girl’s biological father and stepfather, noting that Jade said she had been dreaming about a boy she had a crush on when the alleged abuse occurred, according to the lawsuit.
Weeks later, Jade repeated the allegation to a friend, who told a parent. That parent contacted the Administration for Children’s Services.
Caseworkers arrived the same day, setting off what the family describes in legal filings as a cascade of devastating consequences.
According to the lawsuit, ACS did not contact Jade’s therapist, psychiatrist, friends, or neighbors, nor did the agency review her extensive medical and mental health history. Caseworkers also failed to confirm what medications Jade was prescribed or what she discussed during a therapy appointment she attended after the alleged incident, the family alleges.
In September 2022, ACS caseworkers filed a neglect petition in Brooklyn Family Court accusing Jade’s stepfather, Richard Nimmo, of abuse. The filing did not include Jade’s “extensive” mental health history or other critical contextual information, according to the lawsuit.
“And thus began the systematic dismantling by ACS of every source of love, security, and comfort in Jade’s young life,” the family wrote.
Jade was initially placed with a grandparent who lived in a single-room-occupancy residence and was unable to manage the child’s escalating instability. Jade ran away from the home multiple times, the lawsuit states.
After Jade’s death, the Administration for Children’s Services allegedly backdated case notes and intensified its investigation into her family, according to the lawsuit.
At the same time, the family remained divided, with two of Jade’s siblings living with their mother while her stepfather was ordered to stay away, the filings state.
ACS records were “farcically inaccurate and incomplete,” the family alleged, failing to document Jade’s hallucinations or repeated runaway attempts. Caseworkers also allegedly dismissed Nimmo’s warnings about her daughter’s safety.
Jade was later placed in another foster home. Nimmo last saw her daughter on Christmas Day 2022.
“As soon as Jade saw her mother, she ran into her arms and told her how much she loved her,” the lawsuit states.
Two weeks later, on Jan. 15, 2023, Jade ran away from that foster home. The following day, her body was recovered from the East River, according to the lawsuit.
That same day, ACS allegedly rushed backdated case notes into its records and “dramatically escalated its intrusions,” actions Nimmo claims were an attempt to retroactively justify the agency’s decision to separate the family.
According to the lawsuit, ACS contacted Jade’s longtime therapist for the first time only after her death. Caseworkers also repeatedly questioned her surviving sibling’s teachers and guidance counselor in search of evidence of neglect, the family alleges.
The investigation continued for more than a year, forcing the family to devote what they described as a “full-time job” to responding to the agency’s demands.
“Neither parent was able to sustain their employment,” the lawsuit states. “Within months, the couple had lost not only their jobs but also their home.” The family ultimately moved into a shelter.
In February 2024, a family court judge cleared Jade’s parents of any wrongdoing, calling the abuse allegations “extremely difficult to believe” and describing Nimmo as “as attentive as a parent could have been to Jade’s considerable mental health needs,” according to court records.
“There will be a reckoning,” the family said in a statement. They are seeking unspecified damages.
ACS declined to comment on the litigation.
“The safety and well-being of New York City’s children and youth is our top priority,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement. “The loss of Jade Smith is a terrible tragedy. We offer our deepest condolences to the family.”
