Family suing Carroll County for the wrongful death of their son at stay away camp

OWINGS MILLS, Md. - Nine year old Noah Asid loved being outdoors and couldn't wait for his mother to sign the permission slip for the Hashawha Environmental Camp in Carroll County.

 

"Oh he loved being outside, he loves nature, he loved animals.  He came home with that slip of paper begging me to go," said his mother Katherine Asid.

 

It was a Christmas present to the grade-schooler, a two day overnight camp.

    

His mother never imagined the call she would get just a few days later.

 

"It was on a Tuesday and I was at work.  They called me at work and told me a 100 foot tree fell on my son, that there was a bad accident and they were taking him to the hospital."

 

Noah would die from his injuries that New Years Eve.

      

An accident that took Katherine Asid's only son and forever replacing holiday cheer with unimaginable grief.

       

A hardship she and her attorney now lay squarely on Carroll County.

 

"If you're running a nature center and inviting children, have an obligation to protect those children, you have to be able to know what a dangerous dead tree is that is a hundred feet tall and know that you ought to remove it," said the family’s attorney Jack Lebowitz.

 

The suit alleges this one hundred foot hickory showed obvious signs of decay and was just off the nature path scores of children walk every year in a camp that is something of a Carroll County tradition.

    

Combine that with a wind advisory issued for that morning in 2009, and Asid's family and representation claim negligence.

 

"It's the county that's responsible.  The county has been involved with this activity for years.  They have to provide for the safety of the children," said Grandfather Philip Asid.

 

If they did, Katherine Asid feels she would still have her only son; raising her outgoing and lovable child enjoying a season now otherwise marked by the pain of his death.

 

"He was all about the holidays.  I can't even decorate the tree because me and him decorated the tree.  So I got a Christmas tree with nothing on it," said Katherine.

MeanwhileCarroll Countysays it has not received the lawsuit yet and will not make a comment until it does.