A teacher died of a heart attack caused after witnessing the death of a pupil around two years earlier, his family claim.
Geoff Vezey was assistant principal at Blackburn High School in Melbourne, Australia, when he watched 15-year-old Timothy Fehring die during a field trip to Europe on July 28, 2019.
The student had unwittingly developed an infection in his blood and lungs that turned into sepsis and died in the presence of Mr Vezey at a doctor's office in Vienna, it is reported.
The teacher found the teenager unresponsive, with blood dripping from his nose and covered in vomit. Despite being rushed to hospital, Tim passed away soon after his arrival.
Mr Vezey, 52, died in April 2021 after a heart attack that his family say was triggered by the trauma of witnessing Tim's death.
They are suing the Education Department in the state of Victoria, claiming that the traumatic episode left him with an "acute psychiatric injury".
Court documents showed the assistant principal found it hard to move on from the boy's death and suffered post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and panic attacks, the Herald Sun reported.
The papers claim that the traumatising experience took a severe toll on Mr Vezey and acted as a "contributing factor" in his death.
Mr Vezey's family are taking the case to the County Court for a judge-alone trial after their bid for compensation from the state in January this year failed.
A coroner's report earlier this month shed light on the moments leading up to Tim's death, including heartbreaking text messages sent to his mum in which he revealed he hadn't slept "in hours" and always felt dizzy since landing in Berlin.
Tim lost 5kg in six days, regularly vomited in roadside bins and struggled to walk during the school trip.
But the two teachers who accompanied the pupils on the trip thought he was just homesick and not seriously ill. His condition was attributed, at first, to the spicy food served to him on the Thai Airlines flight he was on.
Coroner Simon McGregor found that the teachers had made the "wrong judgment" in treating Tim and recommended that the ratio of staff to students at future trips should be increased.
The education department accepted the coroner's advice and has already increased staff numbers for excursions.
