The University of Utah acknowledged for the first time the murder of student Lauren McCluskey was “preventable” as it agreed to pay her parents a $13.5 million settlement. The deal puts two civil-rights lawsuits filed against the school to bed, one in state and one in federal court, both alleging the school could have done more to protect McCluskey before she was killed. She had gone to campus police several times in the weeks before Melvin S. Rowland, a known sex offender she had briefly dated, murdered her in 2018. The settlement comes two years to the day of the date of McCluskey’s murder.
